Marian McPartland

There are a million good tunes.

Eliminating the piano means that I’ve always worked closer with the bass than most players.

I don’t care much about music. What I like is sounds.

It bugs me when people try to analyze Jazz as an intellectual theorem. It’s not, it’s feeling.

When I started playing, I was playing just the harmonica. We’re back in the prohibition days. Like down a dark alley somewhere, you’d play for an illegal club that was probably right behind a police station, and what I’d do is sing and play the harmonica. It didn’t take me long to work out that I needed something more, and that was the guitar. So when you added the guitar, the harmonica and my voice, you would be talking with people mainly in the bar, or in the restaurant, or the people in the pub.

If I can’t feel it, I don’t want to sing it.

Jazz has always been a man telling the truth about himself.

It’s part of what the blues does, to write about these things. JB Lenoir was the main one in this regard – he wrote about Korea, too, in fact. Songs that reflect these current situations – in his case, racial issues for the most part: in my case, what has happened to me, and I was in Korea.

I work very hard at being the best musician I can be because I love it.

The first time I ever had to go overseas for music was to play the Royal Festival Hall in London, singing in a tribute to Ella Fitzgerald, and that week was insane: Thursday I rehearse with the orchestra; Friday I sing two songs in front of 2,500 people, which I have never done before; and the next day I go to Abbey Road to record with Herbie Hancock; and then I am playing a pub in south London somewhere, and nobody cares because London have lost some sporting match; and then I go home and I’m standing in front of my washing machine, putting my unmentionables into the dryer, and in that instant, I just looked at myself and said ‘This life is going to be strange’.

As far as playing jazz, no other art form, other than conversation, can give the satisfaction of spontaneous interaction.

I’m now a legend, whether I want to be or not.

One very important thing I learned from Monk was his complete dedication to music. That was his reason for being alive. Nothing else mattered except music, really.

Jazz is America’s classical music.

It was when I found out I could make mistakes that I knew I was on to something.

If you want to be a good blues singer, people are going to be down on you, so dress like you’re going to the bank to borrow money.