It is better to be felt than to be heard.
The way a band works is a metaphor for all sorts of collaborative and larger enterprises that people do.
You don’t have to be Picasso or Rembrandt to create something. The fun of it, the joy of creating, is way high above anything else to do with the art form.
Technique is the ability to translate your ideas into sound through your instrument.
We made records to document ourselves, not to sell a lot of records. I still feel that way. I put out a record because I think it’s beautiful, not necessarily commercial.
Jazz is something you have to feel, something you have to live.
In Kansas City joints ran 9pm-5am. Pay was a $1.25 a night but somebody special like Count Basie could command $1.50.
Why Jazz? This is just the way I see music.
Women bring something different to an instrument if they are respectful of their feminine aesthetic.
One of the things I like about Jazz, kid, is I don’t know what’s going to happen next. Do you?
I was always exposed to music. Mom and dad would have the radio on constantly.
I just fell in love with the integrity of the music and that was it.
I’m a musician at heart, I know I’m not really a singer. I couldn’t compete with real singers. But I sing because the public buys it.
In Europe they look upon jazz as art. In America it’s a diversion. Somebody opens a restaurant and installs another band off to the side. People don’t listen.
I never stop being amazed by all the different ways of playing the guitar and making it deliver a message.
When I got pretty good I went on the road with a group. We starved.
Jazz musicians have some outlaw in them somewhere.
Music gave me the energy to revise, revive myself; renew, rebirth myself. It was a palliative, a relief.
I’ve said that playing the blues is like having to be black twice. Stevie Ray Vaughan missed on both counts, but I never noticed.
New artists can own their content and completely build their base and their following without having to sell or be owned by anybody and it creates such a diversity.
I am an improviser, I improvise music. Whatever you want to call it, it’s all improvised music. I may capture it and go back and write it down for others, but it was originally improvised.
