Lionel Hampton

Black and white players hadn’t appeared together in public before Teddy Wilson and I began working with B.G.

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

Seemed to me that drumming was the best way to get close to God.

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.

The secret is keeping busy, and loving what you do.

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

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.’

You can’t seperate modern jazz from rock or from rhythm and blues – you can’t seperate it. Because that’s where it all started, and that’s where it all come from – that’s where I learned to keep rhythm – in church.

I never heard of a Jazz musician who retired. You love what you do, so what are you going to do… play for the walls?

Listening is the key to everything good in music.

You blows who you is.

I’ve never known a musician who regretted being one. Whatever deceptions life may have in store for you, music itself is not going to let you down.

Play it f**kin’ loud!

I’m an experimenter. It’s rich because every album I’ve done, except for a couple of techno-y records, are different. Really you’ve got to hand it to the Fender Strat, because there are songs in that guitar. It’s a tool of great inspiration and torture at the same time because it’s forever sitting there challenging you to find something else in it, but it is there if you really search.

I was never interested in singing in the church or school. I was more interested in becoming a musician.

The whole concept for the Yeezus album is that we’re not going to be using CDs in the future and since this is the last time we’re going to see it, this is an open casket for the CD.

Jazz is something you have to feel, something you have to live.

It’s easier to copy someone else than to find out how to avoid sounding like someone else.

A musician’s responsibility is to get as much of his art across to the public as possible.

So much of Jazz doesn’t have an audience other than music students or musicians.

Once in a while, the thumb that fits over the neck of the guitar kinda bothers me a little bit, but not that much yet. I figure in time I won’t do much because of my age.