You can have the greatest player in terms of mastering an instrument and be yawning your head off.
The blues comes right back to a person’s feelings, to his daily activities in life. But rich people don’t know nothing about the blues, please believe me.
I sing like I feel.
The first time I went to Paris, it just felt like I was home. I didnt question it.
I just remember always trying to emulate Dinah Washington, hanging out in my bedroom closet.
Learning to read music in Braille and play by ear helped me develop a damn good memory.
Monk encouraged me to emancipate the drums from their subservient role as timekeepers.
Composing is a mindset, a part of who I am.
I compulsively reach for perfection in music, often at the expense of everything else in my life.
Even if you have some brilliant jazz ideas, it’s going to be difficult to get them across unless you have 1-a distinctive sound or 2- a loud sound. These are musts.
If you can’t play the blues, you might as well hang it up.
I’m always interested in looking forward toward the future. Carving out new ways of looking at things.
I’m trying to make music a sensual expression, not and academic experiment.
Music always turns into music. As soon as I play a key, push a key down, there’s no theory any more. When I go and I hear a sound on the keyboard, all theories go out the window.
Mozart tapped the source from which all music flows, expressing himself with a spontaneity and refinement and breathtaking rightness.
Improvisation is the ability to talk to oneself.
Whenever there’s a change with Jazz and its aesthetics, it’s almost always reflected with a change in the culture.
Man, you tell a story.
I often wonder whether Negroes like myself who are pretty well known help out at all in breaking down barriers.
Every time I see a musician – it doesn’t matter what age – that inspires me, there’s always a secret little wish that maybe we’ll play together, because that’s how I learn and grow and so forth, you know. But hopefully there’s a lot more.
Jazz is the only music in which the same note can be played night after night, but differently each time.
