I don’t want to sing anything that doesn’t come real.
Just because I’m playing Jazz I don’t forget about me. I play or write me the way I feel through Jazz.
I’d like to feel that whatever I play is a result of whatever I’ve heard.
To work is to feel alive.
You could still improvise but do it with lyrics.
Jazz is one of the few things you can do in society to express yourself freely and creatively.
A musician starting out today should get a great teacher and learn all there is to know about the instrument.
I love to hear the note sing.
There’s so many ways you can hit one note.
It’s true I’ve always been attracted to the jazz band in an orchestral way, rather than a band way.
I used my mother’s radio as a PA system. I’d take the telephone, the speaking part, and take those two leads off and lead them into the radio and the sound would come out of the speaker.
Django was the definitive genius on the guitar, and the depth of his gift was so spectacular.
Blues purists never cared for me. I don’t worry about it. I think if it this way: When I made ‘Three O’ Clock Blues,’ they were not there. The people out there made the tune. And blues purists just wrote about it. The people is who I’m trying to satisfy.
Music chooses her musicians.
Blues is to Jazz what yeast is to bread; without it, it’s flat.
Every time I see a musician – it doesn’t matter what age – that inspires me, there’s always a secret little wish that maybe we’ll play together, because that’s how I learn and grow and so forth, you know. But hopefully there’s a lot more.
If you play a tune and a person don’t tap their feet, don’t play the tune.
Music is the great arbiter of the world, the key to central harmony and a necessary requirement of human emotion.
Jazz is an art that makes a person completely naked.
I feel that Jazz improvisation is the ultimate. You have to create on the spot, the essence of this music.
I don’t have to lay on the couch and see a therapist because my therapy is in art.
