Eddie Condon

The boppers flat their fifths. We consume ours.

Beiderbecke took out a silver cornet, put it to his lips and blew a phrase. The sound came out like a girl saying ‘yes.’

Inspiration comes from tunes you play, other musicians and your own imagination.

There are so many sounds I still want to make, so many things I haven’t yet done.

I expect the audience to come up to my level.

I’m using the insides of sounds to move around in a very subtle way which, I think, ends up being inevitable.

What makes my approach special is that I do different things. I do jazz, blues, country music and so forth. I do them all, like a good utility man.

The word “jazz” means to me no category, but when you get stuck into wanting to do something the way it was with the “jazz emblem” or logo chained around your neck, you play in a frozen moment in time and you keep fermenting the ‘fifties saying jazz should be this way or that. Well, if jazz to me means no category, then I’ve got the green light And if it sounds like.. sounds like.. sounds like, and keeps crossing over, it’s what I wanted to do in the first place. I like the way Stravinsky and those guys did things. They expressed something, if not themselves. In fact, some people talk about expression, but expression really doesn’t mean anything to me because there’s a lot of work which goes into building a drama and then it’s up to other people to offer “expression.” Expression is such a nebulous thing.

First I was working on classical music that didn’t move me at all. I hated it. So I decided to discover the kinds of classical music that did move me—like Chopin, Satie, Beethoven, and certain Mozart songs. Mozart would play a counterpart with his left hand while using his right to mock it. It was blue, dark, shadowy and it made me feel something. That’s when I realized music was inside me.

To me, the guitar cuts through. It carries more than the organ, but the organ has got more guts.

It’s very difficult for me to dislike an artist. No matter what he’s creating, the fact that he’s experiencing the joy of creation makes me feel like we’re in a brotherhood of some kind… we’re in it together.

Jazz affirms the noblest aspirations of character, individual discipline, perseverance and innovation.

Your daddy’s rich and your ma is good lookin’ So hush little baby don’t you cry.

Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.

To stop the flow of music would be like the stopping of time itself, incredible and inconceivable.

Genius is a word too often tossed around in musical circles.

I kind of hate the fact that people are always trying to put you into a category. I hate walls, and I hate boundaries. I don’t like that. I listen to everything.