Lionel Hampton

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

Playing is my way of thinking, talking, communicating.

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

Man, as long as people want to hear Jazz, I’ll give it to them.

I think I love it more as I get older because I keep getting better on drums, vibes and piano.

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

Jazz has borrowed from other genres of music and also has lent itself to other genres of music.

Music is interior decoration.

Jazz is about being in the moment.

He knows I rip him off every day. He’s the godfather for me. Nobody can say they aren’t influenced by what Stevie Wonder has done.

Jazz speaks for life. This is triumphant music.

All a musician can do is to get closer to the source.

I loved the feeling that I got singing.

Jazz translates the moment into a sense of inspiration for not only the musicians but for the listeners.

There is nothing more stuntastic than rapping in front of an orchestra.

People complain about the music industry, but this is a great time to be a musician.

The inspired moment may sometimes be described as a kind of hallucinatory state of mind: one half of the personality emotes and dictates while the other half listens and notates. The half that listens has better look the other way, had better simulate a half attention only, for the half that dictates is easily disgruntled and avenges itself for too close inspection by fading entirely away.

Invest yourself in everything you do. There’s fun in being serious.

The hippest thing you can do is not play at all. Just listen.

Hipness is not a state of mind, it’s a fact of life.

Once I could play what I heard inside me, that’s when I was born.