Billy Eckstine

I’m glad I don’t have perfect pitch because it can drive you crazy.

If you want to be a musician, study your craft. Study music.

You can’t sing about love unless you know about it.

Jazz is not a what, it is a how.

Everybody has somebody that they patterned themselves after.

If a Jazz musician plays someone else’s song, he has a responsibility to make a distinct and original statement.

Every time I see a musician – it doesn’t matter what age – that inspires me, there’s always a secret little wish that maybe we’ll play together, because that’s how I learn and grow and so forth, you know. But hopefully there’s a lot more.

Hipness is not a state of mind, it’s a fact of life.

You hear about the Duke Ellingtons, the Jimmie Luncefords, and the Fletcher Hendersons, but people sometimes forget that jazz was not only built in the minds of the great ones, but on the backs of the ordinary ones.

When you listen to someone improvise, the notes that are played are only half the story.

Jazz was not only built in the minds of the great ones, but on the backs of the ordinary ones.

If you can’t play the blues, you might as well hang it up.

My music is the spiritual expression of what I am: my faith, my knowledge, my being.

Jazz is the assassination, the murdering, the slaying of syncopation. I would even go so far as to confess that we are musical anarchists.

I always try to teach by example and not force my ideas on a young musician. One of the reasons we’re here is to be a part of this process of exchange.

Your humanity is your instrument.

The joy of music should never be interrupted by a commercial.

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?’