I’m gonna live till I die.
May you live to be 100 and may the last voice you hear be mine.
Whatever else has been said about me personally is unimportant. When I sing, I believe I’m honest.
You gotta love livin’, baby, ’cause dyin’ is a pain in the ass.
Excessive reverence for the romantic illusion of original thought is the most fraudulent and destructive element in Jazz education.
Art should teach spirituality by showing a person a portion of himself that he would not discover otherwise.
It’s like a whole orchestra, the piano for me.
People may say I can’t sing, but no one can ever say I didn’t sing.
I keep these songs in my head until I get behind the microphone. I never spend more than 30 or 40 minutes singing the vocal or it will sound mechanical. There are always mistakes, but it’s about feeling more than being perfect.
Well, if you find a note tonight that sounds good, play the same damn note every night!
When the label came to me to say, ‘would you like to do another record,’ I said, ‘Well I got these sixteen songs sitting here, so let’s do it.’ And that was pretty much it… I never stopped writing, it’s just the way that the business is now; you just try to find a different model.
You can’t sing about love unless you know about it.
If you feel like tapping your feet, tap your feet. If you feel like clapping your hands, clap your hands. And if you feel like taking off your shoes, take off your shoes. We are here to have a ball. So we want you to leave your worldly troubles outside and come in here and swing.
Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of someone else.
I would’ve loved to have been in a band, but sadly I just wasn’t good enough.
I like the music. I love it and live it in fact, but for me the business part just plain stinks.
Don’t threaten me with love, baby. Let’s just go walking in the rain.
Jazz is a music to be played and not to be intellectualized on.
Jazz is America’s classical music.
