Mary Lou Williams

For most dates I was paid the sum of $1 per hr and they always tipped me at the end of the night.

I heard someone say ‘What’s that kid doing here? Call your piano player and let’s get started.’

I listen to all kinds of songs. There’s something to be learned from every type of music and from the one making it, whether it’s pop or jazz or hip-hop.

Jazz is the only music in which the same note can be played night after night, but differently each time.

Blues is to Jazz what yeast is to bread; without it, it’s flat.

We might as well swing boys, because Stravinsky cuts us all.

Anybody can write music of a sort. But touching the public heart is quite another thing.

Don’t settle for style. Succeed in substance.

I’m a big fan of music, a student. I just wanna learn and keep enhancing my education about Jazz.

Jazz – it takes passion to make it happen!

Music is the shorthand of emotion

You could go out and eat and come back and the note would still be playing.

Jazz fans love Miles and I love him for a myriad of reasons, but the overviews are always too simplistic.

My chops were not as fast… [but] I just learned more on what was in my mind than what was in my chops. I learned a long time ago that one note can go a long way if it’s the right one, and it will probably whip the guy with twenty notes.

When rock music came in, I wasn’t bitter about it. I was puzzled.

All I wanted was to be big, to be in show business and to travel… and that’s what I’ve been doing all my life.

I’ve found you’ve got to look back at the old things and see them in a new light.