The guitar chose me.
A person should design the way he makes a living around how he wishes to make a life.
Music making is the most joyful activity possible, the most perfect expression of any emotion.
I want people to walk away with the same joy, hope and love that I put into my music.
Jazz is not dead, it just smells funny.
There is two kinds of music, the good and the bad. I play the good kind.
I used to play pianos in bars. You know in hotels, you’d see guys playing piano with a snifter? That was me, with a painted-on mustache. I was about 15.
The genius of our country is improvisation, and jazz reflects that. It’s our great contribution to the arts.
Music and culture are intrinsically improvisational, existential.
My neighbors always listen to very hip Jazz… whether they like it or not.
Last time I saw Count Basie, he was in a wheelchair. They wheeled him up onto the stage, he sits down at the piano, and he gives the downbeat, and that band played like they were in heaven. And right in the middle, the band cuts. He had to take one hand and put the other on it, and he comes down with one note. And it was the greatest note I ever heard in my life.
Music and song are, in my opinion, so fine and necessary a part of life that without them we cannot be said really to live at all.
Music is the greatest communication in the world.
Eliminating the piano means that I’ve always worked closer with the bass than most players.
The value of music is not dazzling yourself and others with technique.
The spirit of Jazz is the spirit of openness.
The essentials of Jazz are: melodic improvisation, melodic invention, swing and instrumental personality.
