Artie Shaw

Jazz was born out of the whiskey bottle, was raised on marijuana, and will expire on cocaine.

‘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.

Somebody asked me once, ‘Do you think that swing will ever come back?’ And I said, ‘Do you think the 1938 Form will ever come back?’

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.

An artist should write for himself and not for an audience. If the audience likes it, great. If not, they can keep away.

I can’t understand guys who just have to have your autograph. What do you do when you get home, take it out and look at it?

Find the best teachers, listen to the finest playing and try to emulate that. Be true to the music.

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

Practicing is like getting your vocabulary together to use on the gig.

If I’m not a jazz player all the time, I’ve at least been cued in to what I do by jazz.

I always think of music as interior decoration. So, if you have all kinds of music, you are fully decorated!

We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first, rock ‘n’ roll or Christianity.

Nothing else will ever capture the democratic process in sound as perfectly as Jazz.

After the music is over it’s gone in the air. You can never capture it again.

I’m an experimenter. It’s rich because every album I’ve done, except for a couple of techno-y records, are different. Really you’ve got to hand it to the Fender Strat, because there are songs in that guitar. It’s a tool of great inspiration and torture at the same time because it’s forever sitting there challenging you to find something else in it, but it is there if you really search.

You gotta love livin’, baby, ’cause dyin’ is a pain in the ass.

I simply want to reach a level where I will never cease to make progress…so that, even on the bad evenings, I may never be bad enough to despair.

Jazz music today is from the head and not the heart.

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

The popular song is America’s greatest ambassador.

I learn something new every day.