Mary Stallings

When you just get mixed up and there’s too much going on, then it’s time to pick up your guitar.

If I were to call it black music, that would be untrue. I don’t know what that is, unless it would be some African drums or something.

Some twenty years ago, during the course of a memorable evening at the Stravinskys’ home in Los Angeles, the venerable maestro turned to me and said in no uncertain terms: ‘My dear, you should conduct your own music. All composers should conduct their own music!

Composers tend to assume that everyone loves music. Surprisingly enough, everyone doesn’t.

There are so many sounds I still want to make, so many things I haven’t yet done.

Sometimes there are no gigs, but the main thing is still the music.

Once we’re inside a tune, we can do anything with it.

You don’t know what you like, you like what you know. In order to know what you like, you have to know everything.

Other than conversation, no other art form can give the satisfaction of spontaneous interaction like Jazz.

Jazz is one of the few things you can do in society to express yourself freely and creatively.

I’ve never written a political song. Songs can’t save the world. I’ve gone through all that.

Find the best teachers, listen to the finest playing and try to emulate that. Be true to the music.

Music does not come to you. You have to come to it and you’ll walk away with something you didn’t have before.

I could see the blues was about survival.

Miles Davis and John Coltrane were so cool, if alive today global warming wouldn’t be an issue.