Bing Crosby

When Jazz broke through in England, I remember sneaking to listen on the radio much to my parent’s disapproval.

If you follow your passions, you’ll never work a day in your life.

Whenever I’m in Kansas City, I think back to all the jazz-blues greats who played the blues here – like Count Basie, Charlie Parker and Jay McShann. I watched those guys jam in different places and heard a lot of things – but I couldn’t do what they did. They were too good.

My improvisations are a beguiling mixture of the vertical and the horizontal.

If music is sound and came from silence, then silence is potentially greater than sound.

The word “jazz” means to me no category, but when you get stuck into wanting to do something the way it was with the “jazz emblem” or logo chained around your neck, you play in a frozen moment in time and you keep fermenting the ‘fifties saying jazz should be this way or that. Well, if jazz to me means no category, then I’ve got the green light And if it sounds like.. sounds like.. sounds like, and keeps crossing over, it’s what I wanted to do in the first place. I like the way Stravinsky and those guys did things. They expressed something, if not themselves. In fact, some people talk about expression, but expression really doesn’t mean anything to me because there’s a lot of work which goes into building a drama and then it’s up to other people to offer “expression.” Expression is such a nebulous thing.

Jazz music has got to have that thing. You have to be born with it. You can’t even buy it. If you could buy it, they’d have it at the next Newport festival.

I look for a deep, gutty feelin’ in a guitar tone. I don’t use picks. People ask, “How you get that?” It’s just there. There’s a lot of people try to play real fast chords-da da da da da-that ain’t the hard, solid blues. It’s synthetic. It has not feeling to it. You sit down and play some funky, funky guitar. Take your time! Don’t rush it. Just let it come flowing through you. I can play guitar so funky, it’ll bring teardrops to your eyes.

Instrumental music can spread the international language.

Jazz is a work in progress. We’ll be defining traditions in Jazz for 200-300 years.

Jazz attracted me because in it I found a formal perfection and instrumental precision I admire in classical music, but which popular music doesn’t have.

Jazz is music made by and for people who have chosen to feel good in spite of conditions.

Applause felt like approval and it became a drug that soothed the pain, but only temporarily.

Being a musician is what I do, but it’s not what I am.

Jazz is like wine. When it is new it’s only for the experts, but when it gets older everybody wants it.