Les Paul

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.

You could go out and eat and come back and the note would still be playing.

I used my mother’s radio as a PA system. I’d take the telephone, the speaking part, and take those two leads off and lead them into the radio and the sound would come out of the speaker.

Early on, I figured out that when the top of a guitar is vibrating and a string is vibrating, you’ve got a conflict. One of them has got to stop, and it can’t be the string, because that’s making the sound. So in 1934, I asked the Larson Brothers—Chicago instrument makers—to build me a guitar with a half-inch-thick maple top and no f-holes. They thought I was crazy.

You can’t go to the store and buy a good ear and rhythm.

We go in there and we work on altering those ideas and in many cases go in different directions.

Musicians need enough experience to develop a vocabulary.

Jazz is a democratic musical form. We take our respective instruments and collectively create a thing of beauty.

What we do as artists is a combination of experience and imagination. How that creeps into your work is not so linear.

There’s such a cynicism about the phrase ‘I laughed all the way to the bank.’ It’s as though money is what you’re doing, rather than playing music. If you’re playing a money game, why not get into banking?

Jazz Improvisation means that practice is not as straightforward as it would be when you simply have a score to play.

I am attracted to Jazz music for the idea of being in the moment and communicating to people spontaneously.

I don’t believe that a lot of the things I hear on the air today are going to be played for as long a time as Coleman Hawkins records or Brahms concertos.

I never wanted to be like other blues singers. I might like hearing them play, but I’ve never wanted to be anyone other than myself. There are a few people that I’ve wished I could play like, but when I tried, it didn’t work.

Don’t play the saxophone. Let it play you.

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.

Don’t give up trying to do what you really want. Where there is love and inspiration, I don’t think you can go wrong.

Music is my life, professionally, for nearly 60 years. To be recognized by the academy is still the highest honor.

Women have not been socialized to play drums. It’s not natural for us to hit thing.

Music should not have any mandates. Jazz is not supposed to be something that is required to sound like jazz.

Eliminating the piano means that I’ve always worked closer with the bass than most players.