Johnny Griffin

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.

I feel that Jazz improvisation is the ultimate. You have to create on the spot, the essence of this music.

You don’t rehearse Jazz to death to get the camera angles.

There is no such thing as a wrong note.

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

As far as music school goes, I walked through Berkelee one time.

I don’t compose. I assemble materials.

A Les Paul feels like a guitar and I play differently on that and I sound too much like someone else.

I can’t sing it straight. I have no choice but to swing it.

Jazz is there and gone. It happens. You have to be present for it. That simple.

I like an element of chaos in music. That feeling is the best thing ever.

Get out there and improvise and take chances and don’t be a perfectionist.

There’s a way of playing safe, there’s a way of using tricks and there’s the way I like to play which is dangerously where you’re going to take a chance on making mistakes in order to create something you haven’t created before.

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.

[on B.B. King] He is without a doubt the most important artist the blues has ever produced, and the most humble and genuine man you would ever wish to meet. In terms of scale or stature, I believe that if Robert Johnson was reincarnated, he is probably B.B. King.