Bix Beiderbecke

It’s not the style that motivates me, as much as an attitude of openness that I have when I go into a project.

In a way, I started out to be a baritone player.

The guitar chose me.

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

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.

Sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself.

That’s the thing about jazz: it’s free flowing, it comes from your soul.

The more you play, the more you hear and the more you hear, the more you want to play.

Jazz isn’t a what, it’s a how.

Just give a drum roll, announce my name and I come out and sing. I have a contract that says I’m a singer. So I sing.

You can play a shoestring if you’re sincere.

I compose my pieces with a formula that I created myself.

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

Rather than say I play Jazz, I simply say I play music.

Creativity is more than just being different. Anybody can plan weird; that’s easy. What’s hard is to be as simple as Bach. Anyone can make the simple complicated. Creativity is making the complicated simple.