Carol Kaye

By giving the public a rich and full melody, distinctly arranged and well played, all the time creating new tone colors and patterns, I feel we have a better chance of being successful. I want a kick to my band, but I don’t want the rhythm to hog the spotlight.

If you want to make money in music, get into the band uniform business.

I’ll keep evolving and put that into my songs.

When you want ’em you can’t get ’em, when you’ve got ’em, you don’t want ’em.

Especially, I want my work-and the trios if possible-to sing.

A Jazz man should be saying what he feels: humor, sadness, joy… all the things that humans have.

When you’re on stage you have a very strange knowledge of what the audience is. It isn’t exactly a sound – it’s a hum, like the streets.

Music was our wife, and we loved her. And we stayed with her, and we clothed her, and we put diamond rings on her hands.

Jazz demands that you bring to it things that are valuable to you, that are personal to you.

When we were at the Apollo, Holiday was a block away. I asked her for her autograph.

Jazz is the type of music that can absorb so many things and still be Jazz.

I’ve been married twice. Most women would rather not be married to a traveling blues singer.

I think Ive done the best I could have done. But I keep wanting to play better, go further. There are so many sounds I still want to make, so many things I havent yet done. When I was younger I thought maybe Id reached that peak. But Im 86 now, and if I make it through to next month, Ill be 87. And now I know it can never be perfect, it can never be exactly what it should be, so you got to keep going further, getting better.

You’ve got to learn your instrument. Then, you practice, practice, practice. And then, when you finally get up there on the bandstand, forget all that and just wail.

What kills me is that everybody thinks I like Jazz.