Louis Armstrong

I don’t need words. It’s all in the phrasing.

Man, if you gotta ask you’ll never know.

Making money ain’t nothing exciting to me. You might be able to buy a little better booze than the wino on the corner. But you get sick just like the next cat and when you die you’re just as graveyard dead as he is.

What we play is life.

Hot can be cool and cool can be hot and each can be both. But hot or cool man, Jazz is Jazz.

Jazz is played from the heart. You can even live by it. Always love it.

I try stuff. I synthesize what’s of value with some of the other things I have at my disposal.

Music washes away the dust of every day life.

It is this tendency to play with manic enthusiasm on every possible occasion that distinguishes the amateur Jazz musician from the professional.

A musician starting out today should get a great teacher and learn all there is to know about the instrument.

A kiss that is never tasted, is forever and ever wasted.

I bought my first electric guitar when I moved to Memphis; a Gibson with a DeArmond pickup which I used with a small Gibson amplifier.

I’m not much on gimmicks. I never have been because they don’t last.

Jazz standards are our contribution to music history.

I went back and listened to the first three albums I made and tried to figure out what was special about them, why people keep going back to them. I think it was because I didn’t know what I was doing. I had no idea if they were going to play it on the radio or anything. All I did was write songs, so that’s what I got back to.

It’s true I’ve always been attracted to the jazz band in an orchestral way, rather than a band way.

When I got pretty good I went on the road with a group. We starved.

The truth is I never gave it much thought. I just played what I had to play.

If you feel like tapping your feet, tap your feet. If you feel like clapping your hands, clap your hands. And if you feel like taking off your shoes, take off your shoes. We are here to have a ball. So we want you to leave your worldly troubles outside and come in here and swing.

It’s either hip or it ain’t.

For me, the most important thing is the element of chance that is built into a live performance. The very great drawback of recorded sound is the fact that it is always the same. No matter how wonderful a recording is, I know that I couldn’t live with it–even of my own music–with the same nuances forever.