Django Reinhardt

It doesn’t matter all that much. It’s just that when you’re playing, Stephane, you’ve got both Chaput and me backing you, but when I’m soloing I’ve only got one guitar behind me!

Jazz attracted me because in it I found a formal perfection and instrumental precision I admire in classical music, but which popular music doesn’t have.

When Hank Jones had his night off, I would get somebody to take my place as intermission pianist and I’d play the show with Ella, so I would get a chance to play with Ray Brown and Charlie Smith as well.

Critics get a little carried away with what someone should have done, rather than what he did.

True music must repeat the thought and inspirations of the people and the time. My people are Americans and my time is today.

The true artform is being a human being.

I never thought about being famous or rich. I just thought, Oh, I’ll get a nice little girl and go and play every night, and I’d be happy. And that worked for a while. But the little girl’s mother didn’t trust a guy with a horn.

I started as a writer and when I sent my demos out everyone wanted to know who was singing and if that person wanted a record deal.

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

People now have been conditioned to believe they should only buy one song at a time, that nobody can make an entire record that would merit you paying, you know, $7, $8, $10 when CDs in the ’90s were $18, $19 and people bought millions and millions and millions of them.

My improvisations are a beguiling mixture of the vertical and the horizontal.

You know at an early age if you have a talent for music.

I’ll always remember when I first heard Lester [Young]. I’d never heard anyone like him before. He was a stylist with a different sound. A sound I’d never heard before or since. To be honest with you, I didn’t much like it at first.

Jazz and love are the hardest things to describe from rationale.

How are you going to know what’s new to play if you haven’t listened to everything that’s old?

Some people try to get very philosophical and cerebral about what they’re trying to say with jazz. You don’t need any prologues, you just play. If you have something to say of any worth then people will listen to you.

Music used to be essential and meaningful, but now it’s disposable.