Hsun Tzu

If it wasn’t for hustlers, gangsters and gamblers there’d be no Jazz. Wasn’t middle-class who said Let’s go hear Bird tonight.

Whatever else has been said about me personally is unimportant. When I sing, I believe I’m honest.

People may say I can’t sing, but no one can ever say I didn’t sing.

Your ear is the final judge to what sounds right and what sounds wrong.

You could still improvise but do it with lyrics.

You must surrender whatever preconceptions you have about music if you’re really interested in it.

I prefer no one to teach me. I prefer to swing on my own.

The most important thing I look for in a musician is whether he knows how to listen.

Your sound is you and what you really feel inside.

Miles Davis and John Coltrane were so cool, if alive today global warming wouldn’t be an issue.

I’ve never thought the blues was a matter of copying other people. The blues singer should sing songs about his own life. And once the ball got rolling, I felt confident enough to do that as well as cover other people’s songs, and the tributes. You’ve got to think about representing your own life in the music, and for me that meant bringing in an element of jazz; I was brought up on jazz, it was my father’s work, it was in the house.

Gershwin was right in his time, at his time. Everybody else was behind.

Somebody asked me once, ‘Do you think that swing will ever come back?’ And I said, ‘Do you think the 1938 Form will ever come back?’

Keep searching for that sound you hear in your head until it becomes a reality.

Judy Garland was the singer I most wanted to sound like then, not to copy, but to get some of her soul and purity. A wonderful young voice.