Chet Baker

What a fool I am to think my breaking heart could kid the moon.

Well if I could play like Wynton, I wouldn’t play like Wynton.

He almost adds a Chet-like sound to it.

What a guy, what a fool am I, to think my breaking heart could kid the moon.

You don’t know what love is, until you’ve learned the meaning of the blues, until you’ve loved a love you’ve had to lose.

Well if I could play like Wynton Marsalis, I wouldn’t play like Wynton.

The first time I heard Bird play, it hit me right between the eyes.

By and large Jazz has always been like the kind of a man you wouldn’t want your daughter to associate with.

A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write to ultimately be at peace with himself.

Judy Garland was the singer I most wanted to sound like then, not to copy, but to get some of her soul and purity. A wonderful young voice.

I’m fascinated with the electronic devices that we can mess around with.

Your sound is you and what you really feel inside.

Eliminating the piano means that I’ve always worked closer with the bass than most players.

I am only a mixture of countless influences and thanks to that I am able to find my own style of playing.

I loved the feeling that I got singing.

Jazz is so incestuous that it’s starting to kill itself.

I’ll play it first and tell you what it is later.

I think that what is important is that the music be honest and direct and that it is relevant to today.

Today Jazz music is performed and listened to by people of all ethnicity, backgrounds, ages and creeds.

It was a great thrill to listen every night and hear him on NBC radio. Les played just as great then. And then later on, in the 1950s, Les Paul turned the whole world on to guitar. He’s just a terrific, flashy, tasty guitarist.

I played in rhumba bands, mickey mouse bands; all kinds of bands.