Artie Shaw

Dance music-as I keep saying, you can dance to a windshield wiper… a windshield wiper that’s fairly steady gives you a beat and all you need is an out-of-tune playing ‘Melancholy Baby’ and you’ve got dance music.

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.

Shoot for the moon. If you miss you’ll still end up in the stars.

No matter how carefully and assiduously and how deeply you bury shit, the American public will find it and buy it in large quantity, It’s true, absolutely true.

I did all you can do with a clarinet. Any more would have been less.

‘Swing’ is an adjective or a verb, not a noun. All jazz musicians should swing. There is no such thing as a ‘swing band’ in music.

Just to keep it interesting I’ll tune the guitar randomly, so I don’t know what’s going to come out.

Jazz is one of the best things that you can find in your life, it can always be your friend.

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

There’s a way of playing safe and then there’s where you create something you haven’t created before.

I use the audience as my color palette, my instrument.

Inspiration comes from tunes you play, other musicians and your own imagination.

My music had roots which I’d dug up from my own childhood, musical roots buried in the darkest soil.

An entertainer pleases others while an artist only has to please himself.

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.

There’s a lot of recreational Jazz going on, where cats learn a particular style and become sharks on somebody else’s language.

Jazz is the continual pulsation of the now.

I am at my core a singer/songwriter a la James Taylor or a la Billy Joel. It’s not that I don’t want to work with people, but I do just love doing my own thing.

My improvisations are a beguiling mixture of the vertical and the horizontal.

I do Jazz, Blues, Country and so forth. I do them all like a good utility man.

Look at the tune and not make the same statement that has been made a million times.