I’m trying to get people to see that we are our brother’s keeper. Red, white, black, brown or yellow, rich or poor, we all have the blues.
Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of someone else.
If you want to make beautiful music, you must play the black and the white notes together.
How do I know why Miles walks off the stage? Why don’t you ask him? And besides, maybe we’d all like to be like Miles, and just haven’t got the guts.
10% of musicians make 90% of the money, while the remaining 90% of musicians make the 10% that’s left.
Trying to play the new concept with a outward bound feeling.
Most people use music as a couch; they want to be pillowed on it, relaxed and consoled for the stress of daily living. But serious music was never meant to be soporific.
So What or Kind of Blue were done in that era, the right hour, the right day. It’s over; it’s on the record.
I have younger friends who don’t work and they aren’t doing so well. My secret is to keep going, keep working.
I used my mother’s radio as a PA system. I’d take the telephone, the speaking part, and take those two leads off and lead them into the radio and the sound would come out of the speaker.
The sign of a mature musician is knowing what not to play.
I remember Glenn Miller coming to me once, before he had his own band, saying, How do you do it? How do you get started? It’s so difficult. I told him, I don’t know but whatever you do don’t stop. Just keep on going.
Count don’t do nothin’. But it sure sounds good.
It could be my British need for discipline that makes me admire the American appetite for freedom and passion.
Jazz and love are the hardest things to describe from rationale.
Jazz improvisation is the art of drawing without an eraser.
When you want ’em you can’t get ’em, when you’ve got ’em, you don’t want ’em.
Jazz is letting everybody do his or her thing with the music.
I’ll always remember when I first heard Lester [Young]. I’d never heard anyone like him before. He was a stylist with a different sound. A sound I’d never heard before or since. To be honest with you, I didn’t much like it at first.
You have a mentor or teacher and you learn all he can show you.
Music comes from the moment, it is spontaneous, it exists at the time it is created.
