Jelly Roll Morton

Jazz music is a style, not compositions; any kind of music may be played in Jazz if one has the knowledge.

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

I got a chance to listen to and watch Thelonious Monk and his quartet play two shows a night, for six weeks. It was a great education. There was my university, man.

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

Never play anything the same way twice.

Even when you write it, someone’s got to play it. So if you can play it and bypass all the rest of the things, you’re still doing as great as someone that has spent forty years trying to find out how to do that. I’m really pro-human beings, pro-expression of everything.

I think the most important thing about playing is to walk out with confidence, look the people right in the eye and say ‘Here I am,’ and go and do your thing. As soon as they know you’re confident, they’re confident. As long as you adjust to them you’re not in trouble. You should eyeball them, find out what they want, and give it to them. They didn’t pay to come out and look at the tapestries.

Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans.

Jazz is freedom. You think about that.

Stop before you’re done.

That’s a great thing about jazz. We leave it a little space so that we have the opportunity to go where the moment takes us

Don’t say Aretha is making a comeback, because I’ve never been away!

I don’t pop my cork for every man I see.

When I decided that I wanted to be a Jazz musician, I knew that it was about improvising.

If you are not doing what you love, you are wasting your time!

Jazz music just resonates with the frequency of me.