The wonderful thing about Jazz is its willingness to take chances.
It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.
Jazz is a music that allows a person to express his deepest, most personal self.
Blues purists never cared for me. I don’t worry about it. I think if it this way: When I made ‘Three O’ Clock Blues,’ they were not there. The people out there made the tune. And blues purists just wrote about it. The people is who I’m trying to satisfy.
There’s nobody plays like me and I don’t play like anybody else.
In music the passions enjoy themselves.
He knows I rip him off every day. He’s the godfather for me. Nobody can say they aren’t influenced by what Stevie Wonder has done.
The blues fitted in with the early 60s, the social way of life at the time.
I don’t know where Jazz is going. Maybe it’s going to hell. You can’t make anything go anywhere. It just happens.
I thank you in advance for the great round of applause I’m about to get.
I’m… a rather simple person with a limited talent and perhaps a limited perspective.
In order to complete your cycle, a musician needs to write; document what is going through your mind and where you are harmonically, theoretically, historically.
What I came back to is that jazz is a music to be played and not to be intellectualized on.
Jazz is a feeling more than anything else.
They said Bird played bebop, but Bird could still swing. I’ve heard a lot of guys play bebop, but they wasn’t swinging.
I’m always interested in looking forward toward the future. Carving out new ways of looking at things.
Theres such a cynicism about the phrase I laughed all the way to the bank. Its as though money is what youre doing, rather than playing music. If youre playing a money game, why not get into banking?
Music gives us a lot of things and it only wants one thing back… your attention.
Many people forget that Jazz, no matter what form it takes, must come from the heart as well as the mind.
Jazz was not only built in the minds of the great ones, but on the backs of the ordinary ones.
I’m not playing for other musicians. We’re trying to reach the guy who works all day and wants to spend a buck at night. We’ll keep him happy.
