Lionel Hampton

Every day I look forward to getting with my instruments, trying new things.

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

Working with Benny was important for me and for black musicians in general.

I worked hard learning harmony and theory when I was growing up in Chicago in the 1920s.

It’s always Jazz. You can put a new dress on her, a new hat, but no matter what kind of clothes she’s the same old broad.

Gratitude is when memory is stored in the heart and not in the mind.

Don’t play what’s there, play what’s not there.

I used to play a place in Twist, Arkansas… It used to get quite cold in Twist. And they used to take something that looked like a big garbage pail and set it in the middle of the floor, half-fill it with kerosene. They’d light that fuel and that’s what we’d use for heat… But this particular night, two guys started to fighting and one of them knocked the other one over onto this container. When they did it spilled on the floor. Now, it was already burning so when it spilled it looked like a river of fire. Everybody ran for the front door including yours truly. But when I got on the outside then I realized that I’d left the guitar inside. I went back for it. The building was a wooden building and it was burning so fast that when I got my guitar it started to collapse around me. So I almost lost my life trying to save the guitar. But the next morning we found that these two guys who were fighting were fighting about a lady. I never did meet the lady but I learned that her name was Lucille. So I named my guitar Lucille to remind me not to do a thing like that again.

Jazz is all about improvisation and it’s about the moment in time, doing it this way now, and you’ll never do it this way twice. I’ve studied the masters. Why would I want to play ball after the guys who sit on a bench? I want to play like Michael Jordan.

You can have the greatest player in terms of mastering an instrument and be yawning your head off.

Music is the great arbiter of the world, the key to central harmony and a necessary requirement of human emotion.

Don’t be a perfectionist… leave that to the classical musicians.

The true musician plays what he/she hears. That cannot be a mistake.

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

I’m surprised Beyonce liked me. I met Beyonce!!

Jazz is music made by and for people who have chosen to feel good in spite of conditions.

I don’t know where Jazz is going. Maybe it’s going to hell. You can’t make anything go anywhere. It just happens.

Critics don’t buy records. They get ’em free.

[on Glastonbury] I started off the show and I completely messed up the music. And me, as you can imagine by this phone call, I’m a bit of a perfectionist. So it really put me into a slightly depressed state.

Too many jazz pianists limit themselves to a personal style, a trademark, so to speak. They confine themselves to one type of playing. I believe in using the entire piano as a single instrument capable of expressing every possible musical idea. I have no one style. I play as I feel.

One can be very happy without demanding that others agree with them.