You blows who you is.
There are some people that if they don’t know, you can’t tell them.
There is two kinds of music, the good and the bad. I play the good kind.
Jazz is played from the heart. You can even live by it. Always love it.
Not too slow, not too fast. Kind of half-fast.
I don’t need words. It’s all in the phrasing.
Hot can be cool and cool can be hot and each can be both. But hot or cool man, Jazz is Jazz.
A great symphony is a man-made Mississippi down which we irresistibly flow from the instant of our leave-taking to a long forseen destination.
New artists can own their content and completely build their base and their following without having to sell or be owned by anybody and it creates such a diversity.
After two takes you’re imitating yourself.
Jazz speaks for life. This is triumphant music.
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.
I never thought Jazz was meant to be a museum piece like other dead things once considered artistic.
Music is interior decoration.
To rise above the crowd, discipline yourself unceasingly to the strict demand and realities of your ambition.
I feel that Jazz improvisation is the ultimate. You have to create on the spot, the essence of this music.
The radio makes hideous sounds.
Jazz is a white term to define black people. My music is black classical music.
Being so inescapably a part of it, I’ll never know what the listener gets, what the listener feels and that’s too bad.
The emotional reaction is all that matters.
Don’t play what’s there, play what’s not there.
Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.
