Billy Eckstine

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

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

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

You’re just as beautiful as you feel.

The point of Jazz is, you do something and then you go on.

If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn.

Other than conversation, no other art form can give the satisfaction of spontaneous interaction like Jazz.

We’re here to have a ball.

I didn’t know the right names for anything at first, but I knew what knocked me out. Changes… man I dug.

I have been doing music all my life so everyday when I get up I expect music will be part of it.

A Les Paul, which is kind of a sissy guitar compared to a Strat anyway. The Les Paul is heavier, but because of that bulk you can do bends on it more easily. Also, the Les Paul’s lack of a vibrato arm means you’re not wrestling against the spring-loaded bridge all the time. The Strat is the ultimate because it’s like having a miniature pedal steel within it. Once you get familiar with it where the bends are and where they meld down into a fourth or whatever, you can do all kinds of pedal-steel-like things, which I think are cool..

The whole thing of being in music is not to control it but to be swept away by it.

At times in my life the only place I have been happy is when I am on stage.

Jazz has borrowed from other genres of music and also has lent itself to other genres of music.

Mozart in his music was probably the most reasonable of the world’s great composers. It is the happy balance between flight and control, between sensibility and self-discipline, simplicity and sophistication of style that is his particular province… Mozart tapped once again the source from which all music flows, expressing himself with a spontaneity and refinement and breath-taking rightness that has never since been duplicated.

Sometimes it’s to your advantage for people to think you’re crazy.

I listen to all kinds of songs. There’s something to be learned from every type of music and from the one making it, whether it’s pop or jazz or hip-hop.

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?