Diane Schuur

Composing makes me feel like I’ve finally gotten all the way up the ladder as a musician.

That’s where I heard feedback first – from Les Paul. Also vibratos – even before B.B. King, you know. I’ve traced a hell of a lot of rock and roll, little riffs and things, back to Les Paul – it’s all there. I mean, he’s the father of it all: multi-tracking and everything else. If it hadn’t been for him, there wouldn’t have been anything really.

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

In order to compose, all you need to do is remember a tune that no one else has thought of.

The true musician plays what he/she hears. That cannot be a mistake.

You blows who you is.

I’m an experimenter. It’s rich because every album I’ve done, except for a couple of techno-y records, are different. Really you’ve got to hand it to the Fender Strat, because there are songs in that guitar. It’s a tool of great inspiration and torture at the same time because it’s forever sitting there challenging you to find something else in it, but it is there if you really search.

Jazz came to America three hundred years ago in chains.

Jazz is a beautiful word. I love it.

One minute we’re over here, the next minute we’re doing something completely different. But it’s interesting because you are producing so many things you couldn’t do with analog.

I feel that Jazz improvisation is the ultimate. You have to create on the spot, the essence of this music.

I don’t really live like a musician myself. I think music is just something that I do, but I’d like to be doing lots of other things. I like to cure all kinds of illness.

Blues purists never cared for me. I don’t worry about it. I think if it this way: When I made ‘Three O’ Clock Blues,’ they were not there. The people out there made the tune. And blues purists just wrote about it. The people is who I’m trying to satisfy.

I really liked Wynton when I first met him. He’s still a nice young man, only confused.

I love to hear the note sing.