We’re not like pop musicians who have to perform the same top ten tunes every night of a tour.
Life is a lot like jazz. It’s best when you improvise.
It’s just exciting to be part of something that is brand-new.
Too many young musicians today want to win polls before they learn their instruments.
Jazz speaks for life. This is triumphant music.
If you tried to give rock and roll another name, you might call it ‘Chuck Berry’.
The jazziest American contribution to the vocabulary of English is Jazz itself.
The trio is the biggest sound you can have with the smallest unit.
If a jazz player is really playing, the classical player will have to respect him.
I’m no good with chords. I’m horrible with chords.
An entertainer pleases others while an artist only has to please himself.
Women bring something different to an instrument if they are respectful of their feminine aesthetic.
I like to sleep. There is no set time of day for sleep. You sleep when you’re tired and that’s all there is to it.
I used to play pianos in bars. You know in hotels, you’d see guys playing piano with a snifter? That was me, with a painted-on mustache. I was about 15.
I’m trying to make music a sensual expression, not and academic experiment.
I kept thinking there’s bound to be something else? I could hear it sometimes, but I couldn’t play it.
There are four qualities essential to a great jazzman. They are taste, courage, individuality, and irreverence. These are the qualities I want to retain in my music.
We all do ‘do, re, mi’ but you got to find the other notes yourself.
We’re more popular than Jesus Christ now. I don’t know which will go first; rock and roll or Christianity.
Jazz music has become academic. Sometimes that doesn’t feel right to me.
Jazz can only enhance the Classical side and Classical can only enhance the Jazz side.
