Coleman Hawkins

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

You can separate the men from the boys and ballads.

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

I guess what everyone wants more than anything else is to be loved. And to know that you loved me for my singing is too much for me. Forgive me if I don’t have all the words. Maybe I can sing it and you’ll understand.

Sometimes you need to stand with your nose to the window and have a good look at Jazz.

You can make a saxophone into an electric organ; you can do everything with it.

We may not be changing the world dramatically, but we’re improving it one note at a time.

When you begin to teach jazz, the most dangerous thing is that you tend to teach style…I had eleven piano students, and I would say eight of them didn’t even want to know about chords or anything – they didn’t even want to do anything that anybody had ever done, because they didn’t want to be imitators. Well, of course, this is pretty naive…but nevertheless it does bring to light the fact that if you’re going to try to teach jazz…you must abstract the principles of music which have nothing to do with style, and this is exceedingly difficult. So there, the teaching of jazz is a very touchy point. It ends up where the jazz player, ultimately, if he’s going to be a serious jazz player, teaches himself.

There are some people that if they don’t know, you can’t tell them.

When you know the lyrics to a tune, you have some kind of insight as to it’s composition. If you don’t understand what it’s about, you’re depriving yourself of being really able to communicate this poem.

The high note is not the only thing.

I like an element of chaos in music. That feeling is the best thing ever.

Most of the soloists at Birdland had to wait for Parker’s next record in order to find out what to play next. What will they do now?

I never heard of a Jazz musician who retired. You love what you do, so what are you going to do… play for the walls?

Despite the fact I’m a professional performer, it’s true that I have always preferred playing without an audience.

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

I always liked the steel guitar. I also love the guys that play the bottleneck. But I could never do it; I never made it do what I want. So every time I would pick up the guitar, I’d shake my hand and trill it a bit. For some strange reason my ears would say to me that sounds similar to what those guys were doing. I can’t pick up the guitar now without doing it. So that’s how I got into making my sound. It was nothing pretty. Just trying to please myself. I heard that sound.

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.