Miles Davis

Bebop was about change, about evolution. It wasn’t about standing still and being safe.

When you’re creating your own shit, even the sky ain’t the limit.

If you’re trying to be hip, be hip!

If you got up on the bandstand at Minton’s and couldn’t play, you might get your ass kicked.

For me, music and life are all about style

Jazz is the big brother of Revolution. Revolution follows it around.

Just because I’m playing Jazz I don’t forget about me. I play or write me the way I feel through Jazz.

Back in college, when I got kicked out of school, I was still in school, I’d just written the song that got me my record deal. If I hadn’t gotten kicked out of school I wouldn’t be where I am now. Three months after that, I got my record deal and the rest is history.

Every day when I sit down to play, I learn something new.

If I have to go around telling everyone how great I am, then there’s something wrong with my act.

Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.

Jazz – it takes passion to make it happen!

It’s like a whole orchestra, the piano for me.

Jazz music is the real deal.

I’m believe that all people are in possession of what might be called a ‘universal musical mind.’

You don’t know what love is, until you’ve learned the meaning of the blues, until you’ve loved a love you’ve had to lose.

May you live to be 100 and may the last voice you hear be mine.

Music is the greatest communication in the world.

Jazz is all about improvisation and it’s about the moment in time, doing it this way now, and you’ll never do it this way twice. I’ve studied the masters. Why would I want to play ball after the guys who sit on a bench? I want to play like Michael Jordan.

[Ben Taylor] He is an interesting combination of the two of us. His voice box is more like mine but the way his tongue sits in his mouth, and the way he pronounces words, is just like James Taylor.

Anyone who understands Jazz knows that you can’t understand it. It’s too complicated. That’s what’s so simple about it.