Joe Williams

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

You can’t rehearse a blues darlin’.

The louder they [the band] play the softer I sing.

Jazz has an aesthetic intimacy, a romantic transference.

Being so inescapably a part of it, I’ll never know what the listener gets, what the listener feels and that’s too bad.

Jazz is a beautiful woman whose older brother is a policeman.

Jazz to me is a living music. It’s a music that since its beginning has expressed the feelings, the dreams, hopes, of the people.

Always look ahead, but never look back.

One can be very happy without demanding that others agree with them.

I’m not much on gimmicks. I never have been because they don’t last.

When you listen to someone improvise, the notes that are played are only half the story.

Jazz is something you have to feel, something you have to live.

There’s so much music out there and so many possibilities. I like anyone who plays any instrument.

Instrumental music is increasingly marginalized.

Jazz is not just music, it’s a way of life, it’s a way of being, a way of thinking… The new inventive phrases we make up to describe things – all that to me is jazz just as much as the music we play.

I still insist that American performers are the best performers in the world.

That’s the beauty of music. They can’t take it from you.

I listen to everything, I listen to all artists that come along.

Rather than say I play Jazz, I simply say I play music.