Eric Dolphy

After the music is over it’s gone in the air. You can never capture it again.

Never lose the groove to find a note.

The problem is that a lot of the blues stations are late on Saturday night, and like a lot of people, I ain’t no vampire!

When you listen to a pianist, each notes should have an identity, each note should have a soul of its own.

Jazz music is a special skill that has brought pleasure to millions throughout the world.

I thought of nothing else but rock ‘n’ roll; apart from sex and food and money–but that’s all the same thing, really.

I never have any trouble playing anything I can think of. The trouble is thinking of what to play.

I still do what I love, and I don’t really think about it. I try to make a beautiful show, so people go home happy. That’s my biggest aspiration: to make people happy.

If I can’t feel it, I don’t want to sing it.

I have won several prizes as the world’s slowest alto player and a special award in 1961 for quietness.

I’ve had a lot of things to be proud of in my life, but none more than the Jazz festival.

Jazz is about being in the moment.

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.

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

Women bring something different to an instrument if they are respectful of their feminine aesthetic.

Jazz is all about improvisation and it’s about the moment in time, doing it this way now, and you’ll never do it this way twice. I’ve studied the masters. Why would I want to play ball after the guys who sit on a bench? I want to play like Michael Jordan.