I just wonder where I was when the talent was being given out, like George Benson, Kenny Burrell, Eric Clapton… oh, there’s many more! I wouldn’t want to be like them, you understand, but I’d like to be equal, if you will.
If you want to be a good blues singer, people are going to be down on you, so dress like you’re going to the bank to borrow money.
My music had roots which I’d dug up from my own childhood, musical roots buried in the darkest soil.
Many people forget that Jazz, no matter what form it takes, must come from the heart as well as the mind.
Last time I saw Count Basie, he was in a wheelchair. They wheeled him up onto the stage, he sits down at the piano, and he gives the downbeat, and that band played like they were in heaven. And right in the middle, the band cuts. He had to take one hand and put the other on it, and he comes down with one note. And it was the greatest note I ever heard in my life.
If I’m not saying it in four choruses or less, then I’m not saying it.
Jazz translates the moment into a sense of inspiration for not only the musicians but for the listeners.
Every day I look forward to getting with my instruments, trying new things.
Jazz is very much alive. Everywhere I go there’s a new generation of musicians playing Jazz music.
Sometimes I just think that there are more things to be said to make the audience understand what I’m trying to do more. When I’m singing, I don’t want you to just hear the melody. I want you to relive the story, because most of the songs have pretty good storytelling.
I thought of nothing else but rock ‘n’ roll; apart from sex and food and money–but that’s all the same thing, really.
It’s easier to copy someone else than to find out how to avoid sounding like someone else.
I think I should have no other mortal wants, if I could always have plenty of music.
In a way, I started out to be a baritone player.
I am a writer – that is what I am before being a performer or musician. I love waking up in the morning and then going to sleep that night with something that did not exist.
You don’t know what love is, until you’ve learned the meaning of the blues, until you’ve loved a love you’ve had to lose.
I don’t have to lay on the couch and see a therapist because my therapy is in art.
After I left Texas and went to California, I had a hard time getting anyone to play anything that I was writing, so I had to end up playing them myself. And that’s how I ended up just being a saxophone player.
Nothing is so well-prepared as a great spontaneous performance.
What’s tied Jazz together is its foundation in the Blues, a reliance on group interplay and the unique phenomenon of spontaneous improvisation.
Music was our wife and we loved her. We stayed with her, clothed her and put diamond rings on her hands.
