Chet Baker

The drummer; he inspired me to play like no one else I have ever met.

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.

In Europe they look upon jazz as art. In America it’s a diversion. Somebody opens a restaurant and installs another band off to the side. People don’t listen.

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

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

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

The value of music is to be able to play one note at the right time in the right way.

There is a time where you’re beyond yourself, better than your technique, better than your usual ideas.

In olden days a glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking, now heaven knows, anything goes.

I’m not a star. I’m just backing up the cats.

Mozart tapped the source from which all music flows, expressing himself with a spontaneity and refinement and breathtaking rightness.

I’m glad I don’t have perfect pitch because it can drive you crazy.

Your horn is your passport to the world.

I say, ‘Play your own way. Don’t play what the public wants. You play what you want and let the public pick up on what you’re doing – even if it does take them fifteen, twenty years’.

The audience should feel they are hearing the future, arriving just on time.

I’m a big fan of music, a student. I just wanna learn and keep enhancing my education about Jazz.

For me, I started on a Les Paul and went through years of playing other guitars and just came back full circle to what was more natural to me.

If you feel like tapping your feet, tap your feet.

You may be sitting in a room reading this book. Imagine one note struck upon the piano. Immediately that one note is enough to change the atmosphere of the room – proving that the sound element in music is a powerful and mysterious agent, which it would be foolish to deride or belittle.

I regard singing pretty much like acting. Each song is like playing a different role. I get very involved with my material. I feel a responsibility for the emotion it brings out in the listener.

Practice as if you are the worst, play as if you are the best!