Charlie Parker

I can play all I know in eight bars.

Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn. They teach you there’s a boundary line to music. But, man, there’s no boundary line to art.

I am a devout musician.

If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn.

Don’t play the saxophone. Let it play you.

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.

Jazz came to America three hundred years ago in chains.

Perhaps it is a peculiarity of mine that despite the fact that I am a professional performer, it is true that I have always preferred playing without an audience.

What’s tied Jazz together is its foundation in the Blues, a reliance on group interplay and the unique phenomenon of spontaneous improvisation.

When I got started in New York, if you were different from Miles and Dizzy it was very difficult.

I’ve worked with jazz artists, country artists, classical artists, pop artists. I never wanted there to be categories, because when I was a kid there weren’t.

I can’t understand guys who just have to have your autograph. What do you do when you get home, take it out and look at it?

I wasn’t so interested in being paid. I wanted to be heard. That’s why I’m broke.

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

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.

Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life.

Jazz music has got to have that thing. You have to be born with it. You can’t even buy it. If you could buy it, they’d have it at the next Newport festival.

I work very hard at being the best musician I can be because I love it.

If I’m going to sing like someone else, then I don’t need to sing at all

Jazz is a beautiful woman whose older brother is a policeman.

And as long as people have problems, the blues can never die.