Jimmy Smith

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.

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.

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.

I really feel like I made it a great record. I really feel good about it. In this day and age to make a record that you say, ‘This is different,’ that’s a tough nut. I did it by accident but it got done. I don’t know what I’m doing, but I know how to do it.

Everybody has somebody that they patterned themselves after.

So much of Jazz doesn’t have an audience other than music students or musicians.

A lot of singers think all they have to do is exercise their tonsils to get ahead. They refuse to look for new ideas and new outlets, so they fall by the wayside… I’m going to try to find out the new ideas before the others do.

I wanted something very dense, something that would sustain long and more pieces of wood that would be soft, sweet, for more of a mellow sound.

Jazz is a music that allows a person to express his deepest, most personal self.

But I have always suspected that one could substitute the Minuet of Haydn’s 98th symphony for the Minuet in Haydn’s 99th symphony without sensing a serious lack of coherence in either work.

Jazz came to America three hundred years ago in chains.

It’s not what they think, it’s about what’s best for the music.

I am a writer – that is what I am before being a performer or musician. I love waking up in the morning and then going to sleep that night with something that did not exist.

I start in the middle of a sentence and move both directions at once.

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

If you want to make money in music, get into the band uniform business.

Everybody that you could name would join in our audiences from, Laguardia on down. Everybody came. Everybody came to the Cotton Club.

I saw music as a way to entertain people and take them away from their daily lives and put smiles on their faces, as opposed to what I see it being now, which is a way for me to actually communicate, and a way for me to tap into my subconscious.

The hidden things, the subconscious that lies in the body and lets you know: You feel this, you play this.

Musicianship is using your two ears.