Dexter Gordon

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.

What I’m doing, I prefer to call that jazz, because it is a beautiful word – I love it.

Music is a reservoir… of sounds.

If I were to call it black music, that would be untrue. I don’t know what that is, unless it would be some African drums or something.

Darlin… be-bop is the music of the future.

Jazz to me is a living music. It’s a music that since its beginning has expressed the feelings, the dreams, hopes, of the people.

May your heart always be joyful. May your song always be sung.

We all have idols. Play like anyone you care about but try to be yourself while you’re doing so.

I got out of the car and there was a knife in my neck. The guy says, “Don’t move.” And the drummer got out of the car, and he got a gun in his head. This was my entrance to the South Side of Chicago. But it was necessary, because I wanted to play jazz.

Jazz has always been a man telling the truth about himself.

I would sit on the street corners in my hometown of Indianola, Mississippi, and I would play. And, generally, I would start playing gospel songs. People would come by on the street – you live in Time Square, you know how they do it – they would bunch up. And they would always compliment me on gospel tunes, but they would tip me when I played blues.

It made no sense to ignore them and to continue writing as if they did not exist. I felt that it was worth the effort to see if I couldn’t say what I had to say in the simplest possible terms.

Miles told me not to use vibrato because when you get old, you’re going to shake anyway.

The popular song is America’s greatest ambassador.

[On Louis Armstrong] You can’t play nothing on modern trumpet that doesn’t come from him, not even modern shit. I can’t even remember a time when he sounded bad playing the trumpet. Never. Not even one time. He had great feeling up in his playing and he always played on the beat. I just loved the way he played and sang.

Jazzmen are our surrogates for the unpredictable, our paladins of constant change.

Jazz Improvisation means that practice is not as straightforward as it would be when you simply have a score to play.

Play it f**kin’ loud!

Jazz is letting everybody do his or her thing with the music.

You never get it figured out. You just keep playing.

What don’t I want to learn? I have how-to books, history, nature. Ain’t nobody here saying, ‘You’d better learn this.’ But I still think I’ve got a head on my shoulders, and it pleases me.