Herbie Mann

You don’t have to live the blues to play the blues.

If you keep your head in the sand, you don’t know where the kick’s coming from.

Music allows the great opportunity to play with people you love.

I learn something new every day.

Jazz music is the power of now.

I can play all I know in eight bars.

In fifteen seconds the difference between composition and improvisation is that in composition you have all the time you want to decide what to say in fifteen seconds, while in improvisation you have fifteen seconds.

I like to sleep. There is no set time of day for sleep. You sleep when you’re tired and that’s all there is to it.

Play what you feel, feel what you play.

A kiss that is never tasted, is forever and ever wasted.

That’s the beauty of music. They can’t take it from you.

Music is a gift and a burden I’ve had since I can remember who I was.

The radio makes hideous sounds.

I keep these songs in my head until I get behind the microphone. I never spend more than 30 or 40 minutes singing the vocal or it will sound mechanical. There are always mistakes, but it’s about feeling more than being perfect.

Notes are expensive… spend them wisely!

I don’t like to look back because the whole point in Jazz is doing it now.

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

I met up with George Shearing about a year before my mother passed away. When I was 11 years old, Mama took me to the Edgewater Inn in Seattle and I was able to sit down and play piano for George and a lot of (the set list) was songs I had heard from the album, ‘Concerto For My Love.’ Then, after Mama died, my dad and I went to actually hear him perform at the Edgewater Inn when I was 12. Oh my gosh! It just really got me into playing piano.