Music Quotes

I’m not playing for other musicians. We’re trying to reach the guy who works all day and wants to spend a buck at night. We’ll keep him happy.

All I play is truth and emotion.

Beiderbecke took out a silver cornet, put it to his lips and blew a phrase. The sound came out like a girl saying ‘yes.’

Don’t play what’s there, play what’s not there.

Just to keep it interesting I’ll tune the guitar randomly, so I don’t know what’s going to come out.

I came from an era when we didn’t use electronic instruments. The bass wasn’t even amplified. The sound was the sound you got.

When you begin to see the possibilities of music, you desire to do something really good for people.

Find the best teachers, listen to the finest playing and try to emulate that. Be true to the music.

I think music needs to be of its time and speak to that time.

In my family on my mother’s side we’re all church musicians first so I don’t remember a time when we weren’t doing something musical. My brothers and I sang in a little quartet, my aunts and uncles sang and my grandfather was a minister of music in our church, so walking and talking was like doing music for us.

I thought of nothing else but rock ‘n’ roll; apart from sex and food and money–but that’s all the same thing, really.

I don’t think anybody steals anything; all of us borrow.

Music that is born complex is not inherently better or worse than music that is born simple.

You hear about the Duke Ellingtons, the Jimmie Luncefords, and the Fletcher Hendersons, but people sometimes forget that jazz was not only built in the minds of the great ones, but on the backs of the ordinary ones.

I didn’t need to worry about keys, chords, melody if I had that emotion that brought tears and laughter to people’s hearts.

Music gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and charm and gaiety to life.

A good quartet is like a good conversation among friends interacting to each other’s ideas.

You can’t explain Jazz to anyone without losing the experience because it’s feeling, not words.

Some people try to get very philosophical and cerebral about what they’re trying to say with jazz. You don’t need any prologues, you just play. If you have something to say of any worth then people will listen to you.

Damn it, when I’m bombastic, I have my reasons. I want to be bombastic: take it or leave it.

I wanted something very dense, something that would sustain long and more pieces of wood that would be soft, sweet, for more of a mellow sound.