Les Paul

Leo wanted me to be partners with him – for it to be the Fender guitar: the Les Paul Fender. When he approached me with the idea, he brought over a guitar and he gave it to me and I have it here. And I thought, if I’m gonna do this I’m going to go with the biggest company in the world: Gibson. Why should I fool around with some guy who is not a musician – I should go to the Gibson people.

I think the most important thing about playing is to walk out with confidence, look the people right in the eye and say ‘Here I am,’ and go and do your thing. As soon as they know you’re confident, they’re confident. As long as you adjust to them you’re not in trouble. You should eyeball them, find out what they want, and give it to them. They didn’t pay to come out and look at the tapestries.

This guitar is such a pal. It’s a psychiatrist. It’s a doggone bartender. It’s a housewife. This guy is everything. Whenever I find that I’ve got a problem, I’ll go pick my guitar up and play. It’s the greatest pal in the whole world.

I gave up the guitar in 1965. Didn’t want to see a guitar. I’d go out and get drunk. When I came out of the heart surgery, the doc said, “Promise me you’ll work hard.” I said, “I thought working hard is what got me here.” He said, “No, working is what will keep you alive.”

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.

To this day, no one has come up with a set of rules for originality. There aren’t any.

Jazz is not to be sliced into bites by mass marketing geniuses who assume we are mindless cattle.

Mozart tapped the source from which all music flows, expressing himself with a spontaneity and refinement and breathtaking rightness.

To work is to feel alive.

Playing gives me as much good feeling now as it did when I was a bitty kid.

Check out the albums, … Check out the live performances. That’s the reality of it all. Music is such an energizing thing.

The hidden things, the subconscious that lies in the body and lets you know: You feel this, you play this.

Music is the most interesting thing in the world.

By and large Jazz has always been like the kind of a man you wouldn’t want your daughter to associate with.

If a jazz player is really playing, the classical player will have to respect him.

Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn. They teach you there’s a boundary line to music. But, man, there’s no boundary line to art.

I just fell in love with the integrity of the music and that was it.

One of the reasons we’re here is to be a part of this process of exchange.

A Jazz man should be saying what he feels: humor, sadness, joy… all the things that humans have.

Jazz music is the power of now.

And then when I found my sound, it took me two and a half weeks to find my sound and when I did I pulled out all the stops, all the stops I could find.