Jimmy Smith

And then when I found my sound, it took me two and a half weeks to find my sound and when I did I pulled out all the stops, all the stops I could find.

People like the idea of the trio and so I did mostly trio.

Everybody has somebody that they patterned themselves after.

Choosing people to be on your ‘Sammy Hagar and Friends’ record, you’re going, ‘I’ve got so many friends.’ And so many friends have called me up and said, ‘Come on dude, why didn’t you ask me to be on the record?’ I’m going, ‘Damn, I forgot.’ I really did.

Three months. I was playing the organ for three months. It was a challenge for me in the beginning.

Ninety-five percent of my audience was white.

In order to compose, all you need to do is remember a tune that no one else has thought of.

Jazz was not only built in the minds of the great ones, but on the backs of the ordinary ones.

Everything that happened to me as a child involved music. It was part of everyday life, as automatic as breathing.

Through Dizzy and Bird I began to learn about musical structures and the more theoretical aspects of music.

The thing to judge in any jazz artist is, does the man project and does he have ideas.

Nobody has ever been able to define Jazz satisfactorily. This is probably because anyone who was capable of doing so never really wanted to, knowing how much you would have to leave out of the definition.

I always wanted to be a spontaneous composer.

I never wanted to be famous. I only wanted to be great.

No one remembers who wrote the tune, putting pen to paper in some lonely place. They remember who had the hit.

What I came back to is that jazz is a music to be played and not to be intellectualized on.

Being a musician is what I do, but it’s not what I am.

Stop before you’re done.

So What or Kind of Blue were done in that era, the right hour, the right day. It’s over; it’s on the record.

To rise above the crowd, discipline yourself unceasingly to the strict demand and realities of your ambition.

I don’t like to look back because the whole point in Jazz is doing it now.