Frank Wess

What have I got? No looks, no money, no education… just talent.

Music should always be an adventure.

Play the music not the instrument.

You will never know what the meaning of Jazz is if ask what it means.

Mozart in his music was probably the most reasonable of the world’s great composers. It is the happy balance between flight and control, between sensibility and self-discipline, simplicity and sophistication of style that is his particular province… Mozart tapped once again the source from which all music flows, expressing himself with a spontaneity and refinement and breath-taking rightness that has never since been duplicated.

In this era it’s harder for musicians to get together, … Back in the ’80s, we were all at the clubs, you ran into people all the time. Now, everybody’s kind of in their own room with their computers. I use making an album as an opportunity to connect with musicians.

Jazz was not only built in the minds of the great ones, but on the backs of the ordinary ones.

Art should teach spirituality by showing a person a portion of himself that he would not discover otherwise.

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!

We really never know what we’re gonna play when we get on stage.

People involve themselves with the superficiality of Jazz without digging for its soul.

You can’t listen to what people who aren’t musical have to say. When Anytime was released, I had bad reviews, and at first I was hurt. Your songs are like your children. You don’t want to hear, ‘Your kid is ugly.’ But I knew the record was good and it would sell.

All this is saying is, OK I see now, the ‘hood does not quite want Shirley Bassey yet, so let me still give them this. Crack Music was made after Diamonds. After black people were like, ‘I don’t know about this one.’ It was like me reaching too high for the cookie jar.

Just because I’m playing Jazz I don’t forget about me. I play or write me the way I feel through Jazz.

T-Bone was, to me, that sound of being in heaven.