J J Johnson

Jazz is restless. It won’t stay put and it never will.

You don’t know what love is, until you’ve learned the meaning of the blues, until you’ve loved a love you’ve had to lose.

If there is no dance, there is not music.

The other day I came across a recording I made of a night at my apartment when I was living with Kris Kristofferson. Bob Dylan had been around earlier and we were all passing around the guitar. Whenever it came to my turn I would run into the kitchen and say I’d left the coffee on the stove or something. Shyness. Scared to perform.

Deep, unspeakable suffering may well be called a baptism, a regeneration, the initiation into a new state.

It’s not that you want to sing, it’s that you have to sing.

Your sound is you and what you really feel inside.

Knowledge speaks, wisdom listens.

The genius of our country is improvisation, and jazz reflects that. It’s our great contribution to the arts.

It pulled me like a magnet, jazz did, because it was a way that I could express myself.

Too many young musicians today want to win polls before they learn their instruments.

If you don’t know what it is, don’t mess with it.

All of the technique doesn’t matter… only if the feeling is right.

The greatest thing about music is putting it out there for people to figure out.

It’s like an act of murder; you play with intent to commit something.

Musicians should never forget we’re blessed. We have a special gift that people enjoy through us.