Joe Williams

Jazz has an aesthetic intimacy, a romantic transference.

Musicians have the intimacy of bringing two people together and the aesthetic, romantic transference.

You can’t rehearse a blues darlin’.

It’s not that you want to sing, it’s that you have to sing.

We all have idols. Play like anyone you care about but try to be yourself while you’re doing so.

Genius is a word too often tossed around in musical circles.

I’m always looking for ways to develop as a Jazz artist, to find different ways of using my voice.

I’m always interested in looking forward toward the future. Carving out new ways of looking at things.

No one is original. Everyone is derivative.

Jazz is music made by and for people who have chosen to feel good in spite of conditions.

I always liked the steel guitar. I also love the guys that play the bottleneck. But I could never do it; I never made it do what I want. So every time I would pick up the guitar, I ‘d shake my hand and trill it a bit. For some strange reason my ears would say to me that sounds similar to what those guys were doing. I can’t pick up the guitar now without doing it. So that’s how I got into making my sound. It was nothing pretty. Just trying to please myself. I heard that sound.

A musician’s responsibility is to get as much of his art across to the public as possible.

Just to keep it interesting I’ll tune the guitar randomly, so I don’t know what’s going to come out.

The point of Jazz is, you do something and then you go on.

Words are the children of reason and therefore can’t translate the feeling of Jazz because they’re not part of it.

A great teacher stimulates his student’s creativity enough so that they go out and find the answers themselves.

I’m always looking to create new avenues or new visions of music.

Audiences are smart. They are not going to come out to see you unless you are honest.

Paint pictures with sound. First, find your white-the deepest, roundest sound you can play on the guitar. Then, find your black-which is the most extreme tonal difference from white you can play. Now, just pick the note where you’ve got white, pick it where you’ve got black, and then find all those colors in between. Get those colors down, and you’ll be able to express almost any emotion on the guitar.?