Dizzy Gillespie

I don’t care much about music. What I like is sounds.

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.

One of the reasons we’re here is to be a part of this process of exchange.

They’re not particular about whether you’re playing a flatted fifth or a ruptured 129th as long as they can dance to it.

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

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.

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

I don’t know anything about music. In my line you don’t have to.

Change is always happening. That’s one of the wonderful things about Jazz music.

We’re not like pop musicians who have to perform the same top ten tunes every night of a tour.

[on B.B. King] He is without a doubt the most important artist the blues has ever produced, and the most humble and genuine man you would ever wish to meet. In terms of scale or stature, I believe that if Robert Johnson was reincarnated, he is probably B.B. King.

Jazz is rhythm and meaning.

I gave it my absolute everything I had in that howl at the start of the song. And then B. B. King opened up his mouth and I felt like a girl. We had learned and absorbed, but the more we tried to be like B.B., the less convincing we were.

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

I have been doing music all my life so everyday when I get up I expect music will be part of it.

I don’t really get nervous, I prepare. When the music messed up in the beginning, it tapped into my nerves and when you’re nervous and vulnerable, something special and something different can happen.

I’ve always liked the Freddie King/B. B. King rich tone, and at the same time, I like the manic Buddy Guy/Otis Rush Strat tone. So I’m always caught in the middle of the Gibson and Fender sounds. If I’m playing my black [Fender] Strat, and I’m in the middle of a blues, I kind of wish I was playing a [Gibson] Les Paul. Then again, if I was playing a Les Paul, the sound would be great, but I’d be saying, “Man, I wish I had the Stratocaster neck!”

I was a singing disc jockey who heard every type of music there was – and loved it all.

If my own work had more importance than any others, it’s because the piano is the key instrument in music.

If you want to make beautiful music, you must play the black and the white notes together.

The weird thing about bass is the simplest stuff to do is the hardest.