Judy Niemack

Music always turns into music. As soon as I play a key, push a key down, there’s no theory any more. When I go and I hear a sound on the keyboard, all theories go out the window.

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

I compose my pieces with a formula that I created myself.

For most dates I was paid the sum of $1 per hr and they always tipped me at the end of the night.

My music is the spiritual expression of what I am: my faith, my knowledge, my being.

[moving to Las Vegas] It was sort of like a man getting married – you don’t have to go out looking for girls, you’ve got your girl with you. I could go to casinos any time I had money and wanted to, so I actually went less.

Music was our wife and we loved her. We stayed with her, clothed her and put diamond rings on her hands.

No one remembers who wrote the tune, putting pen to paper in some lonely place. They remember who had the hit.

I never had much interest in the piano until I realized that every time I played, a girl would appear on the piano bench to my left and another to my right.

I had spent many years pursuing excellence, because that is what classical music is all about… Now it was dedicated to freedom, and that was far more important.

There are times when you want to go where you used to go and you can’t go there. So I’m back to Count Basie lifting his hand. And I find you can stop that show with one note just like you can with a hundred.

A drummer has to be kind-hearted.

I am not interested in compromising my music to make it palatable to an assumed sub-standard mass.

To stop the flow of music would be like the stopping of time itself, incredible and inconceivable.

If a song’s about something I’ve experienced or that could’ve happened to me it’s good. But if it’s alien to me, I couldn’t lend anything to it. Because that’s what soul is all about.