Melody Gardot

For me an album cover is like a movie poster. I wanted an image that was pure femininity, which could please a sculptor. I went through a lot of suffering. But managing to stand up nude on stage carrying a guitar is a victory.

Music activates the brain at a high level.

I think that age is irrelevant. We’re all pretty much spiritual beings – I consider myself to be about eighty-five. I feel like I’m ancient, like two thousand years old.

If today I can practice a sport, and move around 90% of the time without a cane, it’s because of the love and support of my producers, record labels and above all my audience who have always believed in me. Otherwise I wouldn’t have made much more progress than I did in the hospital.

Baby I’m a fool who thinks it’s cool to fall in love!

The first time I went to Paris, it just felt like I was home. I didn’t question it.

I didn’t get my music together until I was 40.

Jazz is a democratic musical form. We take our respective instruments and collectively create a thing of beauty.

Love songs last because they are about feelings that don’t change.

This be an empty world without the blues.

To keep a band together you simply need a gimmick. The gimmick I use is to pay them money.

I always liked the steel guitar. I also love the guys that play the bottleneck. But I could never do it; I never made it do what I want. So every time I would pick up the guitar, I’d shake my hand and trill it a bit. For some strange reason my ears would say to me that sounds similar to what those guys were doing. I can’t pick up the guitar now without doing it. So that’s how I got into making my sound. It was nothing pretty. Just trying to please myself. I heard that sound.

I used to play – when I first started trying to be professional, I disk jockey from 1949 to 1955 in Memphis, Tennessee, and I was quite popular there as a disk jockey.

Music is a verb.

If you’re trying to be hip, be hip!

I got out of the car and there was a knife in my neck. The guy says, “Don’t move.” And the drummer got out of the car, and he got a gun in his head. This was my entrance to the South Side of Chicago. But it was necessary, because I wanted to play jazz.

Play what you feel, feel what you play.

When Bird came on the scene, it was shocking as in the Bible: everything was dark and then there was light.

Other than conversation, no other art form can give the satisfaction of spontaneous interaction like Jazz.

I think I was supposed to play Jazz.

Music always turns into music. As soon as I play a key, push a key down, there’s no theory any more. When I go and I hear a sound on the keyboard, all theories go out the window.