John Lee Hooker

Back in college, when I got kicked out of school, I was still in school, I’d just written the song that got me my record deal. If I hadn’t gotten kicked out of school I wouldn’t be where I am now. Three months after that, I got my record deal and the rest is history.

I was unfashionable before anyone knew who I was.

I’ve always tried to defend the idea that the blues doesn’t have to be sung by a person who comes from Mississippi, as I did.

There are notes between notes, you know.

Without jazz, life would be a mistake.

When you begin to teach jazz, the most dangerous thing is that you tend to teach style…I had eleven piano students, and I would say eight of them didn’t even want to know about chords or anything – they didn’t even want to do anything that anybody had ever done, because they didn’t want to be imitators. Well, of course, this is pretty naive…but nevertheless it does bring to light the fact that if you’re going to try to teach jazz…you must abstract the principles of music which have nothing to do with style, and this is exceedingly difficult. So there, the teaching of jazz is a very touchy point. It ends up where the jazz player, ultimately, if he’s going to be a serious jazz player, teaches himself.

Jazz music is haunted by its own hungry ghosts.

Sometimes I just think that there are more things to be said to make the audience understand what I’m trying to do more. When I’m singing, I don’t want you to just hear the melody. I want you to relive the story, because most of the songs have pretty good storytelling.

It’s like a language. You learn the alphabet, which are the scales. You learn sentences, which are the chords. And then you talk extemporaneously with the horn. It’s a wonderful thing to speak extemporaneously, which is something I’ve never gotten the hang of. But musically I love to talk just off the top of my head. And that’s what jazz music is all about.

This be an empty world without the blues.

Music used to be essential and meaningful, but now it’s disposable.

The drummer; he inspired me to play like no one else I have ever met.

A name doesn’t make the music. It’s just called that to differentiate it from other types of music.

Bebop was about change, about evolution. It wasn’t about standing still and being safe.

Jazz is the false liquidation of art, instead of utopia becoming reality it disappears from the picture.