Charlie Parker

Don’t play the saxophone. Let it play you.

You’ve got to learn your instrument.

I kept thinking there’s bound to be something else? I could hear it sometimes, but I couldn’t play it.

Once I could play what I heard inside me, that’s when I was born.

Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn. They teach you there’s a boundary line to music. But, man, there’s no boundary line to art.

I realized by using the high notes of the chords as a melodic line, and by the right harmonic progression, I could play what I heard inside me. That’s when I was born.

I thank you in advance for the great round of applause I’m about to get.

Music is a verb.

The popular song is America’s greatest ambassador.

I’m trying to play the truth of what I am. The reason it’s difficult is ’cause I’m changing all the time.

Everything I record, I just try to sound like me and come up with songs that suit what I do and then just go for it. I never know what the public’s going to like, anyway.

Not too slow, not too fast. Kind of half-fast.

[on B.B. King] He is without a doubt the most important artist the blues has ever produced, and the most humble and genuine man you would ever wish to meet. In terms of scale or stature, I believe that if Robert Johnson was reincarnated, he is probably B.B. King.

I had spent many years pursuing excellence, because that is what classical music is all about… Now it was dedicated to freedom, and that was far more important.

It’s easy to play any musical instrument, just touch the right key at the right time and the instrument will play itself.

The real innovators did their innovating by just being themselves.

Jazz is not dead, it just smells funny.

I think we musicians are emissaries. Every time we go before the public, we’re there to make converts.

Music should enrich the soul; it should teach spirituality by showing a person a portion of himself that he would not discover otherwise. It’s easy to rediscover part of yourself, but through art you can be shown part of yourself you never knew existed. That’s the real mission of art. The artist has to find something within himself that’s universal and which he can put into terms that are communicable to other people. The magic of it is that art can communicate to a person without his realizing it.

In the world of Art there are no wrong choices.

I play as I feel.