Jack Walrath

Jazz is the big brother of the blues. If a guy’s playing blues like we play, he’s in high school. When he starts playing jazz it’s like going on to college, to a school of higher learning.

If you take the time and your talent is real, it will last.

A guitar is something you can hold and love and it’s never going to bug you. But here’s the secret about the guitar – it’s defiant. It will never let you conquer it. The more you get involved with it, the more you realize how little you know.

They teach you there’s a boundary line to music. But, man, there’s no boundary line to art.

I have a sense of the importance of music and how powerful it is to bring people together.

Music should strike fire from the heart of man and bring tears to the eyes of woman.

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.

The value of music is not dazzling yourself and others with technique.

The whites come to applaud a Negro performer just like the colored do. When you’ve got the respect of white and colored, you can ease a lot of things.

I used to play pianos in bars. You know in hotels, you’d see guys playing piano with a snifter? That was me, with a painted-on mustache. I was about 15.

If I’m not a jazz player all the time, I’ve at least been cued in to what I do by jazz.

Back in college, when I got kicked out of school, I was still in school, I’d just written the song that got me my record deal. If I hadn’t gotten kicked out of school I wouldn’t be where I am now. Three months after that, I got my record deal and the rest is history.

One of the great moments of my life was when I could write musician on my passport.

Practice as if you are the worst, play as if you are the best!

Miles told me not to use vibrato because when you get old, you’re going to shake anyway.