Stop before you’re done.
I’m always thinking about creating. My future starts when I wake up in the morning and see the light. Then I’m grateful.
I never thought Jazz was meant to be a museum piece like other dead things once considered artistic.
Jazz is the big brother of Revolution. Revolution follows it around.
Always look ahead, but never look back.
I’ll play it first and tell you what it is afterwards.
I really liked Wynton when I first met him. He’s still a nice young man, only confused.
I got out of the car and there was a knife in my neck. The guy says, “Don’t move.” And the drummer got out of the car, and he got a gun in his head. This was my entrance to the South Side of Chicago. But it was necessary, because I wanted to play jazz.
The hippest thing you can do is not play at all. Just listen.
Miles’ sessions were not typical of anybody else’s sessions. They were totally unique.
It is Jazz’s very nature to change, to develop and adapt to the circumstances of its environment.
I’d rather be B.B. King. That’s the way I started. Let the heavy metal guys play heavy metal, let the others play the other… I try to do what I do better, not get away from it.
It’s not jazz as we know jazz here in America.
Most of the stuff I learned to play, I learned in high school. I had a band in high school, a jazz-fusion thing, and I was the keyboard player. I was interested in how the instruments worked and the theory behind playing with them.
In Kansas City joints ran 9pm-5am. Pay was a $1.25 a night but somebody special like Count Basie could command $1.50.
I started as a writer and when I sent my demos out everyone wanted to know who was singing and if that person wanted a record deal.
Wes Montgomery played impossible things on the guitar because it was never pointed out to him that they were impossible.
The boppers flat their fifths. We consume ours.
They’re not particular whether you’re playing a flat 5th or a ruptured 129th as long as they can dance.
Love songs last because they are about feelings that don’t change.
Music is what I hear and something that I live by.
Bebop was about change, about evolution. It wasn’t about standing still and being safe.
