Les Paul

When I started playing, I was playing just the harmonica. We’re back in the prohibition days. Like down a dark alley somewhere, you’d play for an illegal club that was probably right behind a police station, and what I’d do is sing and play the harmonica. It didn’t take me long to work out that I needed something more, and that was the guitar. So when you added the guitar, the harmonica and my voice, you would be talking with people mainly in the bar, or in the restaurant, or the people in the pub.

I got out of the car and there was a knife in my neck. The guy says, “Don’t move.” And the drummer got out of the car, and he got a gun in his head. This was my entrance to the South Side of Chicago. But it was necessary, because I wanted to play jazz.

Every setback might be the very thing that makes you carry on and fight all the harder and become much better.

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.

I was walking down the street, and I saw a sewer digger on his lunch hour open his lunch pail, dig out a harmonica, knock out the cracker crumbs, and play a bunch of tunes on it. I was fascinated by that harmonica, so I stared the guy out of it. I just stared at him. He said, ‘Here, kid, take it. Get out of here.’

I wanted something very dense, something that would sustain long and more pieces of wood that would be soft, sweet, for more of a mellow sound.

When the music changes, so does the dance.

If you want to play somebody’s music, you’d better go into his house.

Jazz is not just music, it’s a way of life, it’s a way of being, a way of thinking.

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.

The expression of freedom that is Jazz improvisation mirrors the ethos of the best parts of society.

Of course, there are a lot of ways you can treat the blues, but it will still be the blues.

A band ought to have a sound all of its own. It ought to have a personality.

That’s a great thing about jazz. We leave it a little space so that we have the opportunity to go where the moment takes us

Give it a good go, try to have fun at it, try to pass on some good notes and some good sounds to your fans, and I don’t think you will have wasted your time.

We all have idols. Play like anyone you care about but try to be yourself while you’re doing so.

I kind of hate the fact that people are always trying to put you into a category. I hate walls, and I hate boundaries. I don’t like that. I listen to everything.

If you are not doing what you love, you are wasting your time!

Jazzmen are our surrogates for the unpredictable, our paladins of constant change.

All I play is truth and emotion.

Jazz amounts to Blues, your unique sound and the elusive genius of improvisation.