Art Blakey

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 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.

A name doesn’t make the music. It’s just called that to differentiate it from other types of music.

[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.

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.

I consider myself a poet first and a musician second. I live like a poet and I’ll die like a poet.

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

If you want to play somebody’s music, you’d better go into his house.

It is better to be felt than to be heard.

The blues fitted in with the early 60s, the social way of life at the time.

There is two kinds of music, the good, and the bad. I play the good kind.

I was really running a music school back then, because my band wasn’t making any money. I keep talking about money, because most people don’t understand the part of money in running a band.

To imitate someone is to insult them.

When you begin to teach Jazz, the most dangerous thing is to teach style.

If T-Bone Walker had been a woman, I would have asked him to marry me. I’d never heard anything like that before: single-string blues played on an electric guitar.

Technique is the ability to translate your ideas into sound through your instrument.

There’s a sadness to all kinds of music if you want to hear it. There’s also happiness to it if you want to hear it.

A great song can pull me out of a slump and lighten my heart.

One can be very happy without demanding that others agree with them.

Music comes from the moment, it is spontaneous, it exists at the time it is created.