Jazz? has no boundaries.
You can practice to learn technique, but I’m more interested in conceiving something in the moment.
When I was coming up, I practiced all the time because I thought if I didn’t I couldn’t do my best.
The spirit of Jazz is the spirit of openness.
I’m always looking to create new avenues or new visions of music.
It pulled me like a magnet, jazz did, because it was a way that I could express myself.
Music happens to be an art form that transcends language.
I learned to play guitar on my lying back while I was bed-ridden. I only thought to record the songs because sometimes I would I couldn’t remember what I had just done. Eventually I started singing, because I thought if I sang it that would help to remember even more. But I wasn’t trying to sing. And then one day-this is really weird -I just wrote a song. It came out at a rapid rate and I recorded it and I listened back to it and was like ‘Wow, it’s a tune’.
He’s not a performer, he’s not a composer, he’s not even a musician, but Norman Granz is Mr. Jazz.
Without jazz, life would be a mistake.
Jazz is a music that allows a person to express his deepest, most personal self.
I don’t like recording studios – except my own, which is just a little room above the garage.
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?
I really feel like I made it a great record. I really feel good about it. In this day and age to make a record that you say, This is different,’ that’s a tough nut. I did it by accident but it got done. I don’t know what I’m doing, but I know how to do it.
When rock music came in, I wasn’t bitter about it. I was puzzled.
Creativity shouldn’t be following radio; it should be the other way around.
Unless I really loved it and felt really passionate about it, I would just kind of abort the song and start a new one.
I don’t care if a dude is purple with green breath as long as he can swing.
Don’t play the saxophone. Let it play you.
Jazz improvisation is the art of drawing without an eraser.
I was born with music inside me. Music was one of my parts. Like my ribs, my kidneys, my liver, my heart. Like my blood. It was a force already within me when I arrived on the scene. It was a necessity for me-like food or water.
There is no such thing as a wrong note.
