Gerry Mulligan

Jazz is a music to be played and not to be intellectualized on.

Only the French, I guess, really use tenor and alto to any great extent in the orchestra.

What I came back to is that jazz is a music to be played and not to be intellectualized on.

I like what I hear other guys doing, but the thing that really attracts me is melodic playing.

You can make a saxophone into an electric organ; you can do everything with it.

I’ve always wanted a C trumpet on top, to have that same kind of facility without shouting.

Quiet is the absence of sound. Silence is the presence of silence.

There are notes between notes, you know.

Anybody can write music of a sort. But touching the public heart is quite another thing.

Everything I’ve ever done was out of fear of being mediocre.

Music is a verb.

We all have idols. Play like anyone you care about, but try to be yourself while you’re doing so.

Jazz has always been a man telling the truth about himself.

Don’t play what’s there, play what’s not there.

The fabulous places I’ve been, wonderful things that’ve happened, great people I’ve met ought to make a story.

You give up your own personality when you imitate somebody.

I heard Mr. Wild Bill Davis. I heard him play in 1930 and he told me that it would take me fifteen years just to learn the pedals, the pedals of the organ and I got mad.

People now have been conditioned to believe they should only buy one song at a time, that nobody can make an entire record that would merit you paying, you know, $7, $8, $10 when CDs in the ’90s were $18, $19 and people bought millions and millions and millions of them.

I remember Elvis as a young man hanging around the Sun Studios. Even then, I knew this kid had a tremendous talent. He was a dynamic young boy. His phraseology, his way of looking at a song, was as unique as Sinatra’s. I was a tremendous fan, and had Elvis lived, there would have been no end to his inventiveness.

Jazz stands for freedom.

Dance music-as I keep saying, you can dance to a windshield wiper… a windshield wiper that’s fairly steady gives you a beat and all you need is an out-of-tune playing ‘Melancholy Baby’ and you’ve got dance music.