Art Blakey

We’re here to have a ball.

People will hire you and then tell you not to do what you were doing when they heard you.

You can’t seperate modern jazz from rock or from rhythm and blues – you can’t seperate it. Because that’s where it all started, and that’s where it all come from – that’s where I learned to keep rhythm – in church.

Jazz is known all over the world as an American musical art form and that’s it. No America, no jazz. I’ve seen people try to connect it to other countries, for instance to Africa, but it doesn’t have a damn thing to do with Africa.

It takes an intelligent ear to listen to Jazz.

If you feel like tapping your feet, tap your feet. If you feel like clapping your hands, clap your hands. And if you feel like taking off your shoes, take off your shoes. We are here to have a ball. So we want you to leave your worldly troubles outside and come in here and swing.

It’s true I’ve always been attracted to the jazz band in an orchestral way, rather than a band way.

A great thing about being a musician is you don’t stop until the day you die.

One shouldn’t be in the habit of quoting oneself.

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.

I wasn’t interested in practicing Bach; I was too busy digging Horace Silver!

You only get better by playing.

Sometimes I sound like gravel and sometimes I sound like coffee and cream.

The truth is I never gave it much thought. I just played what I had to play.

I did go through a trial-and-error period where I tried out lots of different guitars, but within a couple of years I was right back to the Les Paul. From that point it’s stayed with me ever since. I have other guitars—and I love a lot of them—but I’m most at home on a Les Paul. It’s interesting: most of the time I would even rather make a Les Paul do the things those other guitars do. From the get-go, the Les Paul spoke to me.

Don’t play what’s there, play what’s not there.

There’s only one thing that everyone in this world has in common: whether you want to love somebody and you want to be loved in return.

There are a million good tunes.

It’s taken me all my life to learn what not to play.

Trios offer simple instrumentation, but the orchestral possibilities are so profound.

All this is saying is, OK I see now, the ‘hood does not quite want Shirley Bassey yet, so let me still give them this. Crack Music was made after Diamonds. After black people were like, ‘I don’t know about this one.’ It was like me reaching too high for the cookie jar.