Nat Adderley

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

Dog spelled backward is God. That’s pretty heavy.

Bird said he worked as dishwasher at Onyx Club on 52nd St. in the early 1940s just to hear Art Tatum play.

My neighbors always listen to very hip Jazz… whether they like it or not.

The point of Jazz is, you do something and then you go on.

One can be very happy without demanding that others agree with them.

Never play anything the same way twice.

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

First of all, I never strive for identity. That’s something that just has happened automatically as a result, I think, of just putting things together, tearing things apart and putting it together my own way, and somehow I guess the individual comes through eventually.

I like the interplay in the music.

Don’t play what’s there, play what’s not there.

I’ve been married twice. Most women would rather not be married to a traveling blues singer.

The extreme dynamic and percussive possibilities of an acoustic guitar amplified through a bridge pickup have, over many years of performing, informed not only the way I play, but the way I write and sing too. My guitar taught me to sing in textures, from the roundest lingering harmonic to the sharpest snap of a pulled string. Being a percussion instrument as well as a melodic instrument, my guitar also teaches me about the relationship between rhythm and melody. Portable. Did I mention it also taught me about being portable?

Men have died for this music. You can’t get more serious than that.

I played in rhumba bands, mickey mouse bands; all kinds of bands.