Coleman Hawkins

Music should always be an adventure.

If you don’t make mistakes, you aren’t really trying.

There’s nobody plays like me and I don’t play like anybody else.

When you sing, always tell the truth.

Players are coming from other backgrounds: rock, folk, ethnic music. It’s changing Jazz for the better.

Bebop was about change, about evolution. It wasn’t about standing still and being safe.

[On urging Nyro to tell Barbara Streisand that ‘Wedding Bell Blues’ had been personally written for her] It’s not a big lie.

I’m always looking for ways to develop as a Jazz artist, to find different ways of using my voice.

No two people on earth are alike, and it’s got to be that way in music or it isn’t music.

How do I know why Miles walks off the stage? Why don’t you ask him? And besides, maybe we’d all like to be like Miles, and just haven’t got the guts.

I like the interplay in the music.

We’re here to have a ball.

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

I worked until I could play and do changes at any tempo in any key and said ‘What else is there?’ Now I’m finding out.

You just sort of have to play the way you are.

I feel that Jazz improvisation is the ultimate. You have to create on the spot, the essence of this music.

I had a really good time in New Orleans, although I had some very tragic times in Baton Rouge. Some guys beat me up and threw my horn away. ‘Cause I had a beard, then, and long hair like the Beatles.

People will always need love, romance, a tender touch and really personal and deeply felt music.