D C DowDell

The more you listen, the more your hear.

One shouldn’t be in the habit of quoting oneself.

Hipness is what it is. But sometimes hipness is what it ain’t.

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

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

The jazziest American contribution to the vocabulary of English is Jazz itself.

I’d rather be B.B. King. That’s the way I started. Let the heavy metal guys play heavy metal, let the others play the other… I try to do what I do better, not get away from it.

I’m a musician at heart, I know I’m not really a singer. I couldn’t compete with real singers. But I sing because the public buys it.

10% of musicians make 90% of the money, while the remaining 90% of musicians make the 10% that’s left.

You’ve heard me call myself a bluesman and a blues singer. I call myself a blues singer, but you ain’t never heard me call myself a blues guitar man. Well, that’s because there’s been so many can do it better’n I can, play the blues better’n me. I think a lot of them have told me things, taught me things.

Music isn’t just learning notes and playing them. You learn notes to play the music of your soul.

You want the audience to feel what you’re doing.

I never thought Jazz was meant to be a museum piece like other dead things once considered artistic.

It is great to have your own label; you can cultivate your own artists… I’ve worked with pretty much everyone I wanted to.

Improvisation is the ability to talk to oneself.

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

And as long as people have problems, the blues can never die.

It became a kind of a game, to remember the things that had happened five minutes ago. I would start making notes about the things I was doing, on an instrument that was foreign to me, the guitar, so it was just a fun way of doing cognitive therapy. I was none the wiser to it until I began to improve and my ability to speak began to come back.

People all over the world have problems. And as long as people have problems, the blues can never die.

The expression of freedom that is Jazz improvisation mirrors the ethos of the best parts of society.

Everybody came. Everybody came to the Cotton Club.