Joe Pass

Using drugs didn’t help me play, all it did was hang me up for 15 years.

We in the Western world suffer from too many categories and classes; we’ve forgotten that we all still have diapers on. We’ve separated music from life.

Why Jazz? This is just the way I see music.

And if I had a preference, it would be to be able to not be in the studio until 4 in the morning.

There’s always this sound out there that’s just a little beyond my reach and that just sort of keeps me going.

I saw a vibraphone for the first time and knew immediately I had found my means of expression.

You can’t rehearse a blues darlin’.

Jazz is America’s classical music.

Creativity and artistic endeavors have a mission far beyond just making music for the sake of music.

I didn’t know the right names for anything at first, but I knew what knocked me out. Changes… man I dug.

If I could read it, I could play it.

It made no sense to ignore them and to continue writing as if they did not exist. I felt that it was worth the effort to see if I couldn’t say what I had to say in the simplest possible terms.

If you want to know about the Sixties, play the music of The Beatles.

Look at the tune and not make the same statement that has been made a million times.

There’s a sadness to all kinds of music if you want to hear it. There’s also happiness to it if you want to hear it.

I think I had it in the back of my mind that I wanted to sound like a dry martini.