Dizzy Gillespie

The sign of a mature musician is knowing what not to play.

I think the idea is now for blacks to write about the history of our music. It’s time for that, because whites have been doing it all the time. It’s time for us to do it ourselves and tell it like it is.

I always try to teach by example and not force my ideas on a young musician. One of the reasons we’re here is to be a part of this process of exchange.

Men have died for this music. You can’t get more serious than that.

They’re not particular whether you’re playing a flat 5th or a ruptured 129th as long as they can dance.

It’s taken me all my life to learn what not to play.

Master your instrument, master the music and then forget all that and just play.

I don’t dig staying in one groove.

Even now, at 82 years old, if I don’t learn something every day, you know what I think? It’s a day lost. Now, I don’t practice every day. I just take the guitar, swear at it. But I should be swearing at myself. But I fool with music. I’m doing something musically all the time. And my ears are wide open for anything I can hear.

The Blues and Jazz will live forever. So will the Delta and the Big Easy.

All a musician can do is to get closer to the source.

In composition you have all the time you want to decide what to say in 15 seconds, in improvisation you have 15 seconds.

I wanna hear myself everywhere

By giving the public a rich and full melody, distinctly arranged and well played, all the time creating new tone colors and patterns, I feel we have a better chance of being successful. I want a kick to my band, but I don’t want the rhythm to hog the spotlight.

Sometimes I wish I could walk up to my music for the first time, as if I had never heard it before.

A movie and a stage show are two entirely different things. A picture, you can do anything you want. Change it, cut out a scene, put in a scene, take a scene out. They don’t do that on stage.

The Blues? It’s the mother of American music. That’s what is is – the source.

I heard Mr. Wild Bill Davis. I heard him play in 1930 and he told me that it would take me fifteen years just to learn the pedals, the pedals of the organ and I got mad.

To me, singing is like talking. If it ain’t natural, it ain’t right.

I’m a big fan of music, a student. I just wanna learn and keep enhancing my education about Jazz.

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