Glenn Miller

A band ought to have a sound all of its own. It ought to have a personality.

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.

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

Its all about finding the right note at the right place and knowing when to leave it alone.

I’m going to make music out of whatever style it is, being true to the artform itself.

The great jazz instrumentalists taught me how to sing and interpret a song. they showed me how a horn can have as much personality as an actor.

I am an improviser, I improvise music. Whatever you want to call it, it’s all improvised music. I may capture it and go back and write it down for others, but it was originally improvised.

Only play what you hear. If you don’t hear anything, don’t play anything.

Jazz musicians have some outlaw in them somewhere.

I never set out to find a style of my own, it just happened.

A great teacher stimulates his student’s creativity enough so that they go out and find the answers themselves.

You have to pack as much as you can in an hour or 70 minutes. This time around it was 15 songs, so it was a challenge to get them all the right length so you could get them all on.

I was probably six years old when I first sang before an audience.

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

I can’t understand guys who just have to have your autograph. What do you do when you get home, take it out and look at it?

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

Living is easy with eyes closed.

What we hear is the quality of our listening.