Benny Goodman

After you’ve done all the work and prepared as much as you can, what the hell, you might as well go out and have a good time.

Too many young musicians today want to win polls before they learn their instruments.

You have to look good.

I remember Glenn Miller coming to me once, before he had his own band, saying, How do you do it? How do you get started? It’s so difficult. I told him, I don’t know but whatever you do don’t stop. Just keep on going.

As soon as it was understood that we could handle things in our own way, it was the thrill of my life to walk out on that stage with people just hemming the band in.

One way or the other, if you want to find reasons why you shouldn’t keep on, you’ll find ’em. The obstacles are all there; there are a million of ’em.

Genius is a word too often tossed around in musical circles.

I could write six songs in one day with everything that’s going on.

Too many jazz pianists limit themselves to a personal style, a trademark, so to speak. They confine themselves to one type of playing. I believe in using the entire piano as a single instrument capable of expressing every possible musical idea. I have no one style. I play as I feel.

As long as musicians have passion for spontaneity and creating something that’s never been before, Jazz will flourish.

Songwriting is about getting the demon out of me. It’s like being possessed. You try to go to sleep, but the song won’t let you. So you have to get up and make it into something, and then you’re allowed to sleep. It’s always in the middle of the night, or you’re half-awake or tired, when your critical faculties are switched off. So letting go is what the whole game is. Every time you try to put your finger on it, it slips away. You turn on the lights and the cockroaches run away. You can never grasp them…

I’m very shy, and I shy away from people. But the moment I hit the stage, it’s a different feeling I get nerve from somewhere; maybe it’s because it’s something I love to do.

I’m not much on gimmicks. I never have been because they don’t last.

I feel I have only scratched the surface of what I know I am capable of doing.

Today Jazz music is performed and listened to by people of all ethnicity, backgrounds, ages and creeds.

How are you going to know what’s new to play if you haven’t listened to everything that’s old?

I cannot say what I think is right about Music. I only know the rightness of it.

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

I just think swing is a matter of some good things put together that you can really pat your foot by. I can’t define it beyond that.

I always wanted to play the piano, and jazz appealed to me.

Jazz is restless. It won’t stay put and it never will.