What a fool I am to think my breaking heart could kid the moon.
The qualities in music I consider most important are beauty, simplicity, originality, discrimination and sincerity.
I never wanted to be famous. I only wanted to be great.
Sometimes I sound like gravel and sometimes I sound like coffee and cream.
Play what you know and then play above that.
If you can’t play the Blues you might as well hang it up.
Sometimes it’s to your advantage for people to think you’re crazy.
Life is not about finding our limitations, it’s about finding our infinity.
Not too slow, not too fast. Kind of half-fast.
I’m going to be on the road for the rest of my life.
I never really thought about becoming a professional musician.
A lot of singers think all they have to do is exercise their tonsils to get ahead. They refuse to look for new ideas and new outlets, so they fall by the wayside… I’m going to try to find out the new ideas before the others do.
Jazz music is a style, not compositions; any kind of music may be played in Jazz if one has the knowledge.
We in the Western world suffer from too many categories and classes; weve forgotten that we all still have diapers on. Weve separated music from life.
A Les Paul feels like a guitar and I play differently on that and I sound too much like someone else.
When the music changes, so does the dance.
Jazz is such a powerful cultural statement that it’s almost as if it’s intertwined with society.
When rock came in, people didn’t know what to do. Even Sinatra, he didn’t know what to do. The music was changing. And it’s changing now.
Genius is a word too often tossed around in musical circles.
In composition you have all the time you want to decide what to say in 15 seconds, in improvisation you have 15 seconds.
Music is a reservoir… of sounds.
