Artie Shaw

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

There’s such a cynicism about the phrase ‘I laughed all the way to the bank.’ It’s as though money is what you’re doing, rather than playing music. If you’re playing a money game, why not get into banking?

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.

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

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.

Music’s a good thing, it calm the beast in the man.

Instrumental music can spread the international language.

I regard singing pretty much like acting. Each song is like playing a different role. I get very involved with my material. I feel a responsibility for the emotion it brings out in the listener.

When you begin to teach jazz, the most dangerous thing is that you tend to teach style…I had eleven piano students, and I would say eight of them didn’t even want to know about chords or anything – they didn’t even want to do anything that anybody had ever done, because they didn’t want to be imitators. Well, of course, this is pretty naive…but nevertheless it does bring to light the fact that if you’re going to try to teach jazz…you must abstract the principles of music which have nothing to do with style, and this is exceedingly difficult. So there, the teaching of jazz is a very touchy point. It ends up where the jazz player, ultimately, if he’s going to be a serious jazz player, teaches himself.

When you are studying Jazz best thing to do is listen to records and live music as much you can and absorb everything.

The music field was the first to break down racial barriers, because in order to play together, you have to love the people you are playing with, and if you have any racial inhibitions, you wouldn’t be able to do that.

If the audience doesn’t hear what is going on, is it going on?

If someone thinks that peace and love are just a cliche that must have been left behind in the 60s, that’s a problem. Peace and love are eternal.

There’s a way of playing safe, there’s a way of using tricks and there’s the way I like to play which is dangerously where you’re going to take a chance on making mistakes in order to create something you haven’t created before.

If there is no dance, there is not music.

The drummer; he inspired me to play like no one else I have ever met.

I’m trying to make music a sensual expression, not and academic experiment.

I remember going to sleep many nights with a Gibson catalog, dreaming about getting a Les Paul. I finally did, with a loan from my Dad. It’s a really heavy instrument. But it plays like butter. I met Les backstage at a show once. Jeff Beck made me play ‘Flight of the Bumblebee’ for Les, which was a little embarrassing. He changed history, big-time.

I think Ive done the best I could have done. But I keep wanting to play better, go further. There are so many sounds I still want to make, so many things I havent yet done. When I was younger I thought maybe Id reached that peak. But Im 86 now, and if I make it through to next month, Ill be 87. And now I know it can never be perfect, it can never be exactly what it should be, so you got to keep going further, getting better.

I could see the blues was about survival.