Jazz stands for freedom.
It’s like a whole orchestra, the piano for me.
It’s Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, you know. They got a musical mind together and uh, you can’t explain it.
And there is a time where you can be beyond yourself. You can be better than your technique. You can be better than most of your usual ideas. And this is a whole other category that you can get into.
No person in their right mind would want to put their family through what I’ve had to put my family through.
I prefer no one to teach me. I prefer to swing on my own.
I never wanted this kind of life that I’m still living.
Musicians have a really big part to play in spreading messages because they’re able to reach a large portion of people on an emotional level. Artists reach people at their heart; it’s the only time we meet in one place and put our differences aside. When you’re in a forum listening to music, all you feel in that moment is love and the understanding.
When I achieved what I thought the musicians were trying to do, the sound sort of bloomed. When it’s right, everything is beautiful.
I’m always looking to create new avenues or new visions of music.
Music is a verb.
Last time I saw Count Basie, he was in a wheelchair. They wheeled him up onto the stage, he sits down at the piano, and he gives the downbeat, and that band played like they were in heaven. And right in the middle, the band cuts. He had to take one hand and put the other on it, and he comes down with one note. And it was the greatest note I ever heard in my life.
You want the audience to feel what you’re doing.
Learning to read music in Braille and play by ear helped me develop a damn good memory.
I’m a fan first. I believed Duke Ellington when he said there’s no bad music, just some of it is presented badly. As a kid, hanging around Church Street, the presentation of music was so powerful, I couldn’t help but jump for joy. I had discovered art, or truth, or whatever you want to call it; I had seen a light I’d follow forever.
I don’t think I ever sing the same way twice. The blues is sort of a mixed-up thing. You just have to feel it. Anything I do sing is part of my life.
I stole everything I ever heard, but mostly I stole from the horns.
Musicians don’t retire; they stop when there’s no more music in them.
Quiet is the absence of sound. Silence is the presence of silence.
Composers tend to assume that everyone loves music. Surprisingly enough, everyone doesn’t.
I never stop being amazed by all the different ways of playing the guitar and making it deliver a message.
Hell is full of musical amateurs.
