It’s all music.
Critics get a little carried away with what someone should have done, rather than what he did.
It is becoming increasingly difficult to decide where jazz starts or where it stops, where Tin Pan Alley begins and jazz ends, or even where the borderline lies between classical music and jazz. I feel there is no boundary line.
I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.
I never had much interest in the piano until I realized that every time I played, a girl would appear on the piano bench to my left and another to my right.
The wise musicians are those who play what they can master.
If it sounds good and feels good, then it IS good!
There is two kinds of music, the good and the bad. I play the good kind.
It’s taken me all my life to learn what not to play.
When you begin to teach Jazz, the most dangerous thing is to teach style.
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.
Music and song are, in my opinion, so fine and necessary a part of life that without them we cannot be said really to live at all.
If a song’s about something I’ve experienced or that could’ve happened to me it’s good. But if it’s alien to me, I couldn’t lend anything to it. Because that’s what soul is all about.
If you can’t get your songs to people one way, you have to find another.
Musicians need to continue higher learning try to expand the pallet.
I remember Glenn Miller coming to me once, before he had his own band, saying, How do you do it? How do you get started? It’s so difficult. I told him, I don’t know but whatever you do don’t stop. Just keep on going.
To keep a band together you simply need a gimmick. The gimmick I use is to pay them money.
I don’t like to hear someone put down Dixieland. Those people who say there’s no music but bop are just stupid; it shows how much they don’t know.
When Bird came on the scene, it was shocking as in the Bible: everything was dark and then there was light.
Jazz music is the power of now.
Leo wanted me to be partners with him – for it to be the Fender guitar: the Les Paul Fender. When he approached me with the idea, he brought over a guitar and he gave it to me and I have it here. And I thought, if I’m gonna do this I’m going to go with the biggest company in the world: Gibson. Why should I fool around with some guy who is not a musician – I should go to the Gibson people.
I use the audience as my color palette, my instrument.
