Joe Venuti

You can’t copy anybody and end up with anything. If you copy, you’re working without any real feeling.

To keep creating you have to be about change.

The fans dictate to you when you’re done!

There is no such thing as a wrong note.

What I’m doing, I prefer to call that jazz, because it is a beautiful word – I love it.

It is becoming increasingly difficult to decide where jazz starts or where it stops, where Tin Pan Alley begins and jazz ends, or even where the borderline lies between classical music and jazz. I feel there is no boundary line.

The truth is I never gave it much thought. I just played what I had to play.

Music is the greatest communication in the world.

A Jazz man should be saying what he feels: humor, sadness, joy… all the things that humans have.

I don’t do something because I think it’ll sell 30 million albums. I couldn’t care less if it sells just one.

I was first awakened to musical exploration by Dizzy and Bird.

Men have died for this music. You can’t get more serious than that.

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.

True music must repeat the thought and inspirations of the people and the time. My people are Americans and my time is today.

Music opens up minds to dream great dreams about where you can go and what you can do.