Art Blakey

[On the word Jazz] There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s only a word. What’s in a name? Nothing! Cats say, Call me Muhammed so-and-so. But what’s the difference? A name doesn’t make the music. It’s just called that to differentiate it from other types of music. 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.

If you feel like tapping your feet, tap your feet.

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

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.

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.

We’re here to have a ball.

If I can’t feel it, I don’t want to sing it.

I’ll play it first and tell you what it is later.

I thank you in advance for the great round of applause I’m about to get.

People who like Jazz feel the depth and soul and intelligence that the music expresses.

Sometimes I wish I could walk up to my music for the first time, as if I had never heard it before.

You know why I quit playing ballads? Cause I love playing ballads.

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

For most dates I was paid the sum of $1 per hr and they always tipped me at the end of the night.

To me, the guitar cuts through. It carries more than the organ, but the organ has got more guts.

People don’t want to suffer. They want to sound good immediately and this is one of the biggest problems.

The human being receives the pleasure from music, not from the argument over what it is.

Never play anything the same way twice.

Creativity and artistic endeavors have a mission far beyond just making music for the sake of music.

Music is everybody’s possession. It’s only publishers who think that people own it.

I discovered very early that it wasn’t quite enough for me to imitate people.