Jim Hall

Music doesn’t have to hop to be hip, as long as it swings it sings.

Music was our wife and we loved her. We stayed with her, clothed her and put diamond rings on her hands.

I like people who have worked long and hard, developing through introspection and dedication.

Of course, there are a lot of ways you can treat the blues, but it will still be the blues.

I can’t listen to music too often. It affects your nerves, makes you want to say stupid nice things and stroke the heads of people who could create such beauty while living in this vile hell.

Inspiration may be a form of superconsciousness, or perhaps of subconsciousness – I wouldn’t know. But I am sure it is the antithesis of self- consciousness.

The melody is generally what the piece is all about.

Jazz is such a powerful cultural statement that it’s almost as if it’s intertwined with society.

We usually never got out of there before four or five o’clock in the morning. Every morning. So it was rough.

It doesn’t have to be happy music to be inspiring.

There is a time where you’re beyond yourself, better than your technique, better than your usual ideas.

When Bird came on the scene, it was shocking as in the Bible: everything was dark and then there was light.

If you have something in your life worth celebrating, you can put it in a blues song.

Jazz is known all over the world as an American musical art form and that’s it. No America, no jazz. I’ve seen people try to connect it to other countries, for instance to Africa, but it doesn’t have a damn thing to do with Africa.

The real innovators did their innovating by just being themselves.