Lionel Hampton

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

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.

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.

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

Music is an extraordinary vehicle for expressing very powerful emotions. That’s what draws people towards it.

Even if people don’t understand the language that you’re singing in, they still know good music when they hear it.

The weird thing about bass is the simplest stuff to do is the hardest.

You’ve got to learn your instrument. Then, you practice, practice, practice. And then, when you finally get up there on the bandstand, forget all that and just wail.

At times as a performer they segregated us in some of theatres.

I don’t get jazz. It always sounds like a bunch of toddlers let loose in a music room.

I could write six songs in one day with everything that’s going on.

A Jazz Diet will make you hipper, thinner, taller, smarter, richer, happier and more attractive to members of both sexes.

We’re here to have a ball.

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

I write songs about real things… The subject dictates the mood and it goes from there, really.

If I could read it, I could play it.

Improvising musicians are musical travelers, voyagers. There is a freedom to wander the musical landscape.

Let your life be your music and let your music be your life.

Music to me is like breathing. I don’t get tired of breathing, I don’t get tired of music.