It is becoming increasingly difficult to decide where jazz starts or where it stops, where Tin Pan Alley begins and jazz ends, or even where the borderline lies between classical music and jazz. I feel there is no boundary line.
If it sounds good and feels good, then it IS good!
The most important thing I look for in a musician is whether he knows how to listen.
Life has two rules: 1. Never quite 2. Always remember 1.
A problem is a chance for you to do your best.
Fate is being kind to me. Fate doesn’t want me to be too famous too young.
The wise musicians are those who play what they can master.
It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.
It’s like an act of murder; you play with intent to commit something.
I never had much interest in the piano until I realized that every time I played, a girl would appear on the piano bench to my left and another to my right.
To keep a band together you simply need a gimmick. The gimmick I use is to pay them money.
By and large Jazz has always been like the kind of a man you wouldn’t want your daughter to associate with.
Playing bop’ is like playing Scrabble with all the vowels missing.
Roaming through the jungle of ‘oohs’ and ‘ahs’, searching for a more agreeable noise, I live a life of primitivity with the mind of a child and an unquenchable thirst for sharps and flats.
There are two kinds of music. Good music, and the other kind.
Music is my mistress and she plays second fiddle to no one.
I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.
Critics get a little carried away with what someone should have done, rather than what he did.
What does music mean to you? What would you do without music?
Music, of course, is what I hear and something that I more or less live by. It’s not an occupation or profession, it’s a compulsion.
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