Love is sweeping the country.
Deep, unspeakable suffering may well be called a baptism, a regeneration, the initiation into a new state.
One can be very happy without demanding that others agree with them.
You hear about the Duke Ellingtons, the Jimmie Luncefords, and the Fletcher Hendersons, but people sometimes forget that jazz was not only built in the minds of the great ones, but on the backs of the ordinary ones.
I came from an era when we didn’t use electronic instruments. The bass wasn’t even amplified. The sound was the sound you got.
A series of vibrations. What does it matter, the source of the catalyst?
You can’t explain Jazz to anyone without losing the experience because it’s feeling, not words.
I’m not thinking about what needs to be on the radio. I’m not thinking about anything other than – I’m just going to let this music come out of me and not have any sort of preconceived notion of what I should do. I’m just going to do it.
To keep a band together you simply need a gimmick. The gimmick I use is to pay them money.
I hear beauty and elegance combined with passion and fire.
Mozart tapped the source from which all music flows, expressing himself with a spontaneity and refinement and breathtaking rightness.
Montreal was a very active jazz center until club owners started putting in strippers instead of music. Before long, there was nothing to hear.
I see my body as an instrument, rather than an ornament.
Jazz has such great feeling and emotional content it really doesn’t require technical understanding.
I don’t know what they’re thinking about. Just because someone says, ‘I like what you do’ or something: They might like it today and tomorrow they might not. I’ve had that experience with record companies.
My style is to just play. The more live you capture your music-the more unthought-out-the more magical it is.
Music is born out of the inner sounds within a soul.
Even if people don’t understand the language that you’re singing in, they still know good music when they hear it.
