Cab Calloway

90%, 100% are going there to hear the singing. The story is another thing. Nobody’s interested in the story. Happiness is happiness.

We usually never got out of there before four or five o’clock in the morning. Every morning. So it was rough.

You hear about the Duke Ellingtons, the Jimmie Luncefords, and the Fletcher Hendersons, but people sometimes forget that jazz was not only built in the minds of the great ones, but on the backs of the ordinary ones.

At times as a performer they segregated us in some of theatres.

Everybody came. Everybody came to the Cotton Club.

My audience was my life. What I did and how I did it was all for my audience.

Bebop was about change, about evolution. It wasn’t about standing still and being safe.

You could go out and eat and come back and the note would still be playing.

Women have not been socialized to play drums. It’s not natural for us to hit thing.

You could still improvise but do it with lyrics.

I don’t pop my cork for every man I see.

I wasn’t interested in practicing Bach; I was too busy digging Horace Silver!

I listen to everything, I listen to all artists that come along.

Listening is more important than anything because that’s what music is. Somebody is playing something and you’re receiving it.

Sometimes I just think that there are more things to be said to make the audience understand what I’m trying to do more. When I’m singing, I don’t want you to just hear the melody. I want you to relive the story, because most of the songs have pretty good storytelling.

It is evidently known, beyond contradiction, that New Orleans is the cradle of Jazz and I, myself, happened to be the creator in the year 1902.

I wanted to sustain a note like a singer. I wanted to phrase a note like a saxist. By bending the strings, by trilling my hand – and I have big fat hands – I could achieve something that approximated a vocal vibrato. I could sustain a note. I wanted to connect my guitar to human emotions. By fooling with the feedback between my amplifier and instrument, I started experimenting with sounds that expressed my feelings, whether happy or sad, bouncy or bluesy. I was looking for ways to let my guitar sing.

By and large, jazz has always been like the kind of a man you wouldn’t want your daughter to associate with.

The saxophone is an imperfect instrument, especially the tenor and soprano, as far as intonation goes. The challenge is to sing on an imperfect instrument that is outside of your body.

Will the people in the cheaper seats clap your hands? All the rest of you, if you

Jazz goes into my coffee in the morning, in my wine at night.