Always keep reaching.
Inspiration comes from tunes you play, other musicians and your own imagination.
Improvising musicians are musical travelers, voyagers. There is a freedom to wander the musical landscape.
Jazzmen are our surrogates for the unpredictable, our paladins of constant change.
It is people’s hearts that move the age.
I stole everything I ever heard, but mostly I stole from the horns.
Jazz was not only built in the minds of the great ones, but on the backs of the ordinary ones.
Perhaps it is a peculiarity of mine that despite the fact that I am a professional performer, it is true that I have always preferred playing without an audience.
To be a true artist you have to play the way you feel not the way others think you should feel.
[Stratocaster vs Les Paul] It’s a totally different animal. One is for very subtle and, I would say, more musical things that you can distract and abuse. You can’t do that with a Les Paul. It’s too delicate. It’s got a very delicate tone; most people don’t ever realize that because they are plugged into monstrous amplifiers which completely, instantaneously covers up the unique sound quality it has. All those years of development go straight out the window when you overload the amp.
All we are saying is give peace a chance.
I have younger friends who don’t work and they aren’t doing so well. My secret is to keep going, keep working.
I get interested in the various ways that music is being done in the culture, and some of it I like thoroughly enough to want to learn about it. The way I have been successful at doing that is to become part of it.
I was always exposed to music. Mom and dad would have the radio on constantly.
Don’t bullshit, just play.
Everybody that you could name would join in our audiences from, Laguardia on down. Everybody came. Everybody came to the Cotton Club.
I’m a fan first. I believed Duke Ellington when he said there’s no bad music, just some of it is presented badly. As a kid, hanging around Church Street, the presentation of music was so powerful, I couldn’t help but jump for joy. I had discovered art, or truth, or whatever you want to call it; I had seen a light I’d follow forever.
The value of music is to be able to play one note at the right time in the right way.
