D C DowDell

Jazz improvisation is the art of drawing without an eraser.

Spontaneously composed music is a counterpoint that has its own rules based on a natural order and intuitive logic.

While many attempts have been made to define Jazz, what’s the point really. Jazz is to be experienced – period.

What’s tied Jazz together is its foundation in the Blues, a reliance on group interplay and the unique phenomenon of spontaneous improvisation.

While many forms of music may use the dynamic of improvisation, Jazz exemplifies the unique characteristic of collective improvisation.

Jazz improvisation is the art of collective negotiated expression.

I call myself a blues singer, but you ain’t never heard me call myself a blues guitar man.

My dream is to do whatever I want without any interference from the record company.

While many attempts have been made to define Jazz, what’s the point really. Jazz is to be experienced – period.

I did go through a trial-and-error period where I tried out lots of different guitars, but within a couple of years I was right back to the Les Paul. From that point it’s stayed with me ever since. I have other guitars—and I love a lot of them—but I’m most at home on a Les Paul. It’s interesting: most of the time I would even rather make a Les Paul do the things those other guitars do. From the get-go, the Les Paul spoke to me.

Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn. They teach you there’s a boundary line to music. But, man, there’s no boundary line to art.

Not too slow, not too fast. Kind of half-fast.

No, working is what will keep you alive.

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

Joe’s been my drummer for 14 years, and we’ve been buddies for six years.

Only the French, I guess, really use tenor and alto to any great extent in the orchestra.

There are times when you want to go where you used to go and you can’t go there. So I’m back to Count Basie lifting his hand. And I find you can stop that show with one note just like you can with a hundred.

A good quartet is like a good conversation among friends interacting to each other’s ideas.

I don’t meditate before I play or compose, but I see playing and composing as meditative acts.

Play the way you’d like to be and soon you’ll be the way you play.

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.