Lee Morgan

There are no natural barriers. It’s all music.

People like the idea of the trio and so I did mostly trio.

I don’t meditate before I play or compose, but I see playing and composing as meditative acts.

There is a time where you’re beyond yourself, better than your technique, better than your usual ideas.

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

It is people’s hearts that move the age.

For me, there wasn’t a line between working and getting paid or simply playing for fun.

I would sit on the street corners in my hometown of Indianola, Mississippi, and I would play. And, generally, I would start playing gospel songs. People would come by on the street – you live in Time Square, you know how they do it – they would bunch up. And they would always compliment me on gospel tunes, but they would tip me when I played blues.

I like people who have worked long and hard, developing through introspection and dedication.

Jazz affirms the noblest aspirations of character, individual discipline, perseverance and innovation.

The way a band works is a metaphor for all sorts of collaborative and larger enterprises that people do.

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

Love songs last because they are about feelings that don’t change.

I’m not a star. I’m just backing up the cats.

As far as playing jazz, no other art form, other than conversation, can give the satisfaction of spontaneous interaction.

My version of Georgia became the state song of Georgia. That was a big thing for me, man. It really touched me. Here is a state that used to lynch people like me suddenly declaring my version of a song as its state song. That is touching.