Gerry Mulligan

In a way, I started out to be a baritone player.

If you’ve only got one horn playing, I still want the sense of ensemble.

I’m fascinated with the electronic devices that we can mess around with.

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.

Miles Davis is one who writes songs when he plays.

I can tell whether a person can play just by the way he stands.

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

It doesn’t matter all that much. It’s just that when you’re playing, Stephane, you’ve got both Chaput and me backing you, but when I’m soloing I’ve only got one guitar behind me!

Jazz has evolved with an inner necessity characteristic of any true art form.

In our local Baptist church, I sang in the choir and formed a gospel quartet. When our minister caught me messing with his guitar, he taught me three positions – one, four and five. After that, I taught myself to play.

Notes are expensive… spend them wisely!

People will hire you and then tell you not to do what you were doing when they heard you.

If you want to play somebody’s music, you’d better go into his house.

Stop before you’re done.

Judy Garland was the singer I most wanted to sound like then, not to copy, but to get some of her soul and purity. A wonderful young voice.

You not only have to know your own instrument, you must know the others and how to back them up at all times. That’s jazz.

Know the business; you need to know the business side of things.

I didn’t get my music together until I was 40.

You don’t know what love is, until you’ve learned the meaning of the blues, until you’ve loved a love you’ve had to lose.

All music is beautiful.