Lionel Hampton

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

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

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.

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.

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

Playing is my way of thinking, talking, communicating.

It’s always been a gift with me, hearing music the way I do. I don’t know where it comes from, it’s just there and I don’t question it.

What kills me is that everybody thinks I like Jazz.

You know why I quit playing ballads? Cause I love playing ballads.

I’m a big fan of music, a student. I just wanna learn and keep enhancing my education about Jazz.

Canada has a passive-aggressive culture, with a lot of sarcasm and righteousness. That went with my weird messianic complex. The ego is a fascinating monster. I was taught from a young age that I had to serve, so that turned into me thinking I had to save the planet.

If you must listen to bad music, please use headphones.

Jazz is a music that allows a person to express his deepest, most personal self.

If I were to call it black music, that would be untrue. I don’t know what that is, unless it would be some African drums or something.

You get that right tickin’ rhythm, man and its ON!

If you can’t play the Blues you might as well hang it up.

We recorded to document ourselves, not to sell a lot of records.

I’m always thinking about creating. My future starts when I wake up in the morning and see the light. Then I’m grateful.

The idea is more important than the style you’re playing in.

I still do what I love, and I don’t really think about it. I try to make a beautiful show, so people go home happy. That’s my biggest aspiration: to make people happy.

I had an affinity for music and could play anything I heard on the piano, but I wasn’t scholastically advanced in any way. It was more of a habitual tendency. I would work on weekends at piano bars playing jazz when I was an art student, but the music wasn’t mine – it was covers: everything from Radiohead to really old jazz. But other than that, the only training I had was piano lessons from when I was nine until I was eleven.