Mike Bloomfield

If you really understand the meaning of be-bop, you understand the meaning of freedom.

There’s such a cynicism about the phrase ‘I laughed all the way to the bank.’ It’s as though money is what you’re doing, rather than playing music. If you’re playing a money game, why not get into banking?

Music is a calling that you must bring your best to, whether listening, practicing or performing.

After two takes you’re imitating yourself.

I grew up with the piano. I learned its language as I learned to speak.

What I came back to is that jazz is a music to be played and not to be intellectualized on.

You have to understand the styles and it’s good to study those that came before us.

Rather than say I play Jazz, I simply say I play music.

I would sit on the street corners in my hometown of Indianola, Mississippi, and I would play. And, generally, I would start playing gospel songs. People would come by on the street – you live in Time Square, you know how they do it – they would bunch up. And they would always compliment me on gospel tunes, but they would tip me when I played blues.

If you listen to Donny Hathaway, he had a lot of jazz elements in the way he sang, … For me, the two styles borrow from each other so much that sometimes it’s hard for me to make a distinction. When you hear Lalah sing the combination, that’s when she really shines – when she’s allowed to dip into her jazz when she wants to and then get soulful and do the R ‘n’ B thing.

They always want to sell me as a hard bopper.

You can separate the men from the boys and ballads.

Our music is generally the music I would play way back when I was in the record business. So I’ll play World Waiting For The Sunrise and How High The Moon, maybe Over The Rainbow, some standards. But it depends upon the artist that comes up – if people like a certain kind of music, I will focus the show that way. Whoever walks up on to the stage is the star – he is the picture, we are the frame. The frame is there to make the star look better – let’s make this fellow the best he’s ever going to be.

I don’t consider myself a musician who has achieved perfection and can’t develop any further.

The reason I write music is that I feel it’s a vehicle or channel which leads to your true self, your essence.