Billy Higgins

For me, there wasn’t a line between working and getting paid or simply playing for fun.

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

You get that right tickin’ rhythm, man and its ON!

It is great to have your own label; you can cultivate your own artists… I’ve worked with pretty much everyone I wanted to.

I want to keep redefining my work and trying new things. I want my music to be able to fit into any category. I want it to float wherever my heart goes. My music is heart music; giving it any other description is dangerous.

If I’m going to sing like someone else, then I don’t need to sing at all

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

I heard Mr. Wild Bill Davis. I heard him play in 1930 and he told me that it would take me fifteen years just to learn the pedals, the pedals of the organ and I got mad.

Let the music speak for itself.

The English pianist Alan Clare was once intrigued with a workman who was carrying out some remodeling inside his house. Clare was playing some recordings, and he began to notice that the workman was whistling along with whatever music he put on – Beethoven, Rachmaninoff, it didn’t seem to matter. Even if he hadn’t heard it before, he had the natural musical ability to follow a melody closely and almost automatically. Clare decided to give him a real test and dug up his recording of Art Tatum doing Tea For Two, with the ground-breaking chord changes Tatum introduced into the tune. The workman never lost a beat nor did he lay out for a bar or two to figure out what was going on. He tracked Tatum flawlessly through all his changes, and when the record ended, he spoke for the first time. He glanced at Clare and with classic English understatement said, ‘Tricky f**ker, ain’t he?’

People may say I can’t sing, but no one can ever say I didn’t sing.

Don’t say Aretha is making a comeback, because I’ve never been away!

I was probably six years old when I first sang before an audience.

Montreal was a very active jazz center until club owners started putting in strippers instead of music. Before long, there was nothing to hear.

Music is the shorthand of emotion