Herbie Mann

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.

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

Bird said he worked as dishwasher at Onyx Club on 52nd St. in the early 1940s just to hear Art Tatum play.

It bugs me when people try to analyze jazz as an intellectual theorem. It’s not. It’s feeling.

Jazz fans love Miles and I love him for a myriad of reasons, but the overviews are always too simplistic.

Early on, I figured out that when the top of a guitar is vibrating and a string is vibrating, you’ve got a conflict. One of them has got to stop, and it can’t be the string, because that’s making the sound. So in 1934, I asked the Larson Brothers—Chicago instrument makers—to build me a guitar with a half-inch-thick maple top and no f-holes. They thought I was crazy.

Trios offer simple instrumentation, but the orchestral possibilities are so profound.

Your accompanist has a lot to do with how you sing, so experiment and choose your partner wisely.

You gotta love livin’, baby, ’cause dyin’ is a pain in the ass.

An entertainer pleases others while an artist only has to please himself.

There is two kinds of music, the good and the bad. I play the good kind.

The true artform is being a human being.

There is no truer truth obtainable by man than comes of music.

Breathe…. breathe a lot!

I wrote “Pilot of My Destiny” because of my love of flying. The fact that my brother is a pilot inspired me to write it. I call him pilot. He calls me copilot.

Music isn’t just learning notes and playing them. You learn notes to play the music of your soul.

If you want to make beautiful music, you must play the black and the white notes together.