Buddy Rich

A musician starting out today should get a great teacher and learn all there is to know about the instrument.

You only get better by playing.

As far as music school goes, I walked through Berkelee one time.

Music is everybody’s possession. It’s only publishers who think that people own it.

He knows I rip him off every day. He’s the godfather for me. Nobody can say they aren’t influenced by what Stevie Wonder has done.

I am not interested in compromising my music to make it palatable to an assumed sub-standard mass.

You may be sitting in a room reading this book. Imagine one note struck upon the piano. Immediately that one note is enough to change the atmosphere of the room – proving that the sound element in music is a powerful and mysterious agent, which it would be foolish to deride or belittle.

Jazz has always been a man telling the truth about himself.

Mozart tapped the source from which all music flows, expressing himself with a spontaneity and refinement and breathtaking rightness.

Actually, I think the more Ben [Taylor] sings, the less like James he sounds.

In olden days a glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking, now heaven knows, anything goes.

I don’t get jazz. It always sounds like a bunch of toddlers let loose in a music room.

The essentials of Jazz are: melodic improvisation, melodic invention, swing and instrumental personality.

10% of musicians make 90% of the money, while the remaining 90% of musicians make the 10% that’s left.

So What or Kind of Blue were done in that era, the right hour, the right day. It’s over; it’s on the record.

When you know the lyrics to a tune, you have some kind of insight as to it’s composition.

An entertainer pleases others while an artist only has to please himself.

My job is to write songs that have emotional meaning to me.