Jazz stands for freedom.
No person in their right mind would want to put their family through what I’ve had to put my family through.
I’m beginning to understand myself. But it would have been great to be able to understand myself when I was 20 rather than when I was 82.
And there is a time where you can be beyond yourself. You can be better than your technique. You can be better than most of your usual ideas. And this is a whole other category that you can get into.
It’s Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, you know. They got a musical mind together and uh, you can’t explain it.
Damn it, when I’m bombastic, I have my reasons. I want to be bombastic: take it or leave it.
Notes are expensive… spend them wisely!
The secret is keeping busy, and loving what you do.
If there is no dance, there is not music.
Jazz isn’t the kind of music you’re going to learn in 3 or 4 years or get because you have talent for music.
What we hear is the quality of our listening.
A chimpanzee could learn what I do physically, but it goes way beyond that. When you play, you play life.
Jazz means many things to many people, but it’s all about choices.
The thing to judge in any jazz artist is, does the man project and does he have ideas.
Man, as long as people want to hear Jazz, I’ll give it to them.
If I have to go around telling everyone how great I am, then there’s something wrong with my act.
Gershwin was right in his time, at his time. Everybody else was behind.
One of the things I like about Jazz, kid, is I don’t know what’s going to happen next. Do you?
What I’m doing, I prefer to call that jazz, because it is a beautiful word – I love it.
A Jazz musician is supposed to find his voice, find his niche and do his thing.
I’ll always write music. Whether I release a record, whether I let the public hear it or not, I’m always writing music.
