Glenn Miller

By giving the public a rich and full melody, distinctly arranged and well played, all the time creating new tone colors and patterns, I feel we have a better chance of being successful. I want a kick to my band, but I don’t want the rhythm to hog the spotlight.

I thought I had swell ideas and wonderful musicians but no one else did.

I haven’t got a great jazz band and I don’t want one. Some of the critics, Down Beat’s among them, point their fingers at us and charge us with forsaking real jazz . . . It’s all in what you define as ‘real jazz.’ It happens that to our ears harmony comes first. A dozen colored bands have a better beat than mine. Our band stresses harmony.

I haven’t a great Jazz band and I don’t want one.

I want a kick to my band, but I don’t want the rhythm to hog the spotlight.

It’s been a big week for our side. Over on the beaches of Normandy our boys have fired the opening guns of the long awaited drive to liberate the world.

Everybody came. Everybody came to the Cotton Club.

The true musician plays what he/she hears. That cannot be a mistake.

I wanted to put jazz on the record, all the loves of music that I had on the record, so I could show people I was ahead of my 19 years. It may have been over the heads of some people.

The expression of freedom that is Jazz improvisation mirrors the ethos of the best parts of society.

Of the whole bunch of guys who play hollow body guitar, I think Herb Ellis has the most drive.

The more vulnerable and the more confused the song is, the equal and opposite effect is how I feel after having written it.

It’s not jazz as we know jazz here in America.

Jazz is not background music. You must concentrate in order to get the most out of it. You must absorb it.

I got out of the car and there was a knife in my neck. The guy says, “Don’t move.” And the drummer got out of the car, and he got a gun in his head. This was my entrance to the South Side of Chicago. But it was necessary, because I wanted to play jazz.

I’ll play it first and tell you what it is later.

There’s such a cynicism about the phrase ‘I laughed all the way to the bank.’ It’s as though money is what you’re doing, rather than playing music. If you’re playing a money game, why not get into banking?

Let the music speak for itself.

In the world of Art there are no wrong choices.

I really liked Wynton when I first met him. He’s still a nice young man, only confused.

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.