D C DowDell

The true value of this music lies in an artist’s individual creativity and that unique process of expression which is Jazz.

Play the music not the instrument.

A Jazz Diet will make you hipper, thinner, taller, smarter, richer, happier and more attractive to members of both sexes.

Jazz improvisation is the art of collective negotiated expression.

If the bass plays the root, a pianist superimposes a Maj7 built on the 5th and the sax plays the 13th, will hot women notice?

If your dreams don’t scare you they’re not big enough!

Music is what feelings sound like.

I, myself, came to enjoy the players who didn’t only just swing but who invented new rhythmic patterns, along with new melodic concepts. And those people are: Art Tatum, Bud Powell, Max Roach, Sonny Rollins, Lester Young, Dizzy Gillespie and Charles Parker, who is the greatest genius of all to me because he changed the whole era around.

Once in a while, the thumb that fits over the neck of the guitar kinda bothers me a little bit, but not that much yet. I figure in time I won’t do much because of my age.

Creativity and artistic endeavors have a mission far beyond just making music for the sake of music.

We quest for the perfect performance and every note has to be right. Man, every note is not right in life.

During these years I began to feel an increasing dissatisfaction with the relations of the music-loving public and the living composer. It seemed to me that we composers were in danger of working in a vacuum.

I developed in my head that I’m never any better than my last concert or the last time I played, so it’s like an audition each time. You get nervous just before going onstage. I still have that, but I think it’s more like concern. You’re concerned about the people – like meeting your in-laws for the first time.

I look for a deep, gutty feelin’ in a guitar tone. I don’t use picks. People ask, “How you get that?” It’s just there. There’s a lot of people try to play real fast chords-da da da da da-that ain’t the hard, solid blues. It’s synthetic. It has not feeling to it. You sit down and play some funky, funky guitar. Take your time! Don’t rush it. Just let it come flowing through you. I can play guitar so funky, it’ll bring teardrops to your eyes.

I let my body play what’s in my heart. I play life instead of notes. I play what I lived.

In my world, the first thing I reach for is the sound.

My dark sound could be heard across a room clearer than somebody with a reedy sound. It had more projection. My sound always seemed to fill a room.

Musically, I love to talk just off the top of my head and that’s what Jazz is all about.

We all played bad before we played good.

If you want to be a musician, study your craft. Study music.

In Jazz, improvisation isn’t a matter of just making any ol’ thing up. Jazz, like any language, has its own grammer and vocabulary. There’s no right or wrong, just some choices that are better than others.