Let my children have music.
Good Jazz is when the leader jumps on the piano, waves his arms and yells. Fine Jazz is when a tenorman lifts his foot in the air. Great Jazz is when he heaves a piercing note for 32 bars and collapses on his hands and knees. A pure genius of Jazz is manifested when he and the rest of the orchestra runaround the room while the rhythm section grimaces and dances around their instruments.
Anyone can make the simple complicated. Creativity is making the complicated simple.
I, myself, came to enjoy the players who didn’t only just swing but who invented new rhythmic patterns, along with new melodic concepts. And those people are: Art Tatum, Bud Powell, Max Roach, Sonny Rollins, Lester Young, Dizzy Gillespie and Charles Parker, who is the greatest genius of all to me because he changed the whole era around.
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.
Most of the soloists at Birdland had to wait for Parker’s next record in order to find out what to play next. What will they do now?
I’m too busy playing. When I’m playing I don’t pay attention to who’s listening. When I was listening I listened to symphony orchestras, Beethoven, Bach, Brahms, Stravinsky. You don’t listen to one instrument; you listen to music.
Will the people in the cheaper seats clap your hands? All the rest of you, if you
All music is beautiful.
People may say I can’t sing, but no one can ever say I didn’t sing.
I don’t care for the music when they’re talking bad about women because I think women are God’s greatest gift to the planet – I just like music.
I remember Elvis as a young man hanging around the Sun Studios. Even then, I knew this kid had a tremendous talent. He was a dynamic young boy. His phraseology, his way of looking at a song, was as unique as Sinatra’s. I was a tremendous fan, and had Elvis lived, there would have been no end to his inventiveness.
Jazz music is a style, not compositions; any kind of music may be played in Jazz if one has the knowledge.
What’s tied Jazz together is its foundation in the Blues, a reliance on group interplay and the unique phenomenon of spontaneous improvisation.
I don’t know where Jazz is going. Maybe it’s going to hell. You can’t make anything go anywhere. It just happens.
I’m not thinking about what needs to be on the radio. I’m not thinking about anything other than – I’m just going to let this music come out of me and not have any sort of preconceived notion of what I should do. I’m just going to do it.
90%, 100% are going there to hear the singing. The story is another thing. Nobody’s interested in the story. Happiness is happiness.
The piano ain’t got no wrong notes.
You only get better by playing.
Jazz is not gonna be a dinosaur and stay around in one form.
By and large Jazz has always been like the kind of a man you wouldn’t want your daughter to associate with.
He almost adds a Chet-like sound to it.
