Melody Gardot

For me an album cover is like a movie poster. I wanted an image that was pure femininity, which could please a sculptor. I went through a lot of suffering. But managing to stand up nude on stage carrying a guitar is a victory.

Jazz is a sideways glance at music. It’s like being an architect, knowing the basis of design but understanding that the façade can be whatever you dream. I’m a free person. I don’t want to be tied down.

After the accident, I had to reconstruct myself completely. I was taught to see again and to hear with hearing aids. My body had to be completely reprogrammed. And music therapy was at the core of the healing process.

I think that age is irrelevant. We’re all pretty much spiritual beings – I consider myself to be about eighty-five. I feel like I’m ancient, like two thousand years old.

When you make a sound, it carries on to infinity. Sound is a vibration. Vibration is energy. All of that survives in space long after we’re dead. When I walk on stage at the Wiener Staatsoper, I can feel the footsteps of Chopin and Rachmaninov.

Why Jazz? This is just the way I see music.

Whenever there’s a change with Jazz and its aesthetics, it’s almost always reflected with a change in the culture.

The first jazz I heard was Duke Ellington. I was learning to play classical music, but my teacher swapped out those lessons for jazz lessons because I had started adding grace notes to Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff.

Hipness is not a state of mind, it’s a fact of life.

Everything that happened to me as a child involved music. It was part of everyday life, as automatic as breathing.

I never had a chance to play with dolls like other kids. I started working when I was 6 years old.

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.

It takes an intelligent ear to listen to Jazz.

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

Somebody asked me once, ‘Do you think that swing will ever come back?’ And I said, ‘Do you think the 1938 Form will ever come back?’

Jazz will endure just as long people hear it through their feet instead of their brains.

An entertainer pleases others while an artist only has to please himself.

No one is original. Everyone is derivative.

Sometimes it’s to your advantage for people to think you’re crazy.

[In 1969] I think lyrics have always been important to any serious writer of music.

I was unfashionable before anyone knew who I was.