The guitar chose me.
A person should design the way he makes a living around how he wishes to make a life.
I have always seen Jazz as innovative.
I’m using the insides of sounds to move around in a very subtle way which, I think, ends up being inevitable.
There has always been a tension between Jazz as a commercial music and as an art form.
When we were at the Apollo, Holiday was a block away. I asked her for her autograph.
If I’m not a jazz player all the time, I’ve at least been cued in to what I do by jazz.
I guess what people forget sometimes is that when I write songs, I write them sometimes in about 20 minutes.
Inspiration comes from tunes you play, other musicians and your own imagination.
Some people try to get very philosophical and cerebral about what theyre trying to say with jazz. You dont need any prologues, you just play. If you have something to say of any worth then people will listen to you.
The true musician is to bring light into people’s hearts.
On my album Here, that’s the first time that I’ve really understood how I could put all the things that were happening in the world and in my life and in our lives as just human beings into one body that was just so powerful and really had a perspective. That was an opening for me and I think that naturally, there is just so much to talk about. I don’t see me getting quiet anytime soon.
A young tenor player was complaining to me that Coleman Hawkins made him nervous. Man, I told him Hawkins was supposed to make him nervous! Hawkins has been making other sax players nervous for forty years!
Look at the tune and not make the same statement that has been made a million times.
Some players get very philosophical and cerebral about Jazz. You don’t need any prologues, you just play.
The value of music is not dazzling yourself and others with technique.
I play the way I do cause it allows me to come up w/ the sickest sounds possible. That’s the point now isn’t it?
