Abraham Maslow

To the man who only has a hammer, everything he encounters begins to look like a nail.

I wanted to make somebody feel like Coltrane made me feel.

The value of music is to be able to play one note at the right time in the right way.

Jazzmen are our surrogates for the unpredictable, our paladins of constant change.

I’m fascinated with the electronic devices that we can mess around with.

Everybody that you could name would join in our audiences from, Laguardia on down. Everybody came. Everybody came to the Cotton Club.

If you tried to give rock and roll another name, you might call it ‘Chuck Berry’.

Music is the tool to express life – and all that makes a difference.

I, of course, wanted to play real jazz. When we played pop tunes, and naturally we had to, I wanted those pops to kick! Not loud and fast, understand, but smoothly and with a definite punch.

First I was working on classical music that didn’t move me at all. I hated it. So I decided to discover the kinds of classical music that did move me—like Chopin, Satie, Beethoven, and certain Mozart songs. Mozart would play a counterpart with his left hand while using his right to mock it. It was blue, dark, shadowy and it made me feel something. That’s when I realized music was inside me.

Music must be an innovation.

People all over the world have problems. And as long as people have problems, the blues can never die.

It’s like a whole orchestra, the piano for me.

I don’t meditate before I play or compose, but I see playing and composing as meditative acts.

There are two kinds of music. Good music, and the other kind.

You can have the greatest player in terms of mastering an instrument and be yawning your head off.