Nat Adderley

A drummer has to be kind-hearted.

And then when I found my sound, it took me two and a half weeks to find my sound and when I did I pulled out all the stops, all the stops I could find.

Composers tend to assume that everyone loves music. Surprisingly enough, everyone doesn’t.

Music activates the brain at a high level.

Too many jazz pianists limit themselves to a personal style, a trademark, so to speak. They confine themselves to one type of playing. I believe in using the entire piano as a single instrument capable of expressing every possible musical idea. I have no one style. I play as I feel.

Improvisation is the most widespread of all musical activities. Why did so many people spend so long pretending it never happened?

I always liked the steel guitar. I also love the guys that play the bottleneck. But I could never do it; I never made it do what I want. So every time I would pick up the guitar, I’d shake my hand and trill it a bit. For some strange reason my ears would say to me that sounds similar to what those guys were doing. I can’t pick up the guitar now without doing it. So that’s how I got into making my sound. It was nothing pretty. Just trying to please myself. I heard that sound.

When I was in the country and I was trying to play, nobody seemed to pay too much attention to me. People used to say, ‘That’s just that ole blues singer.’

Jazz has always been a man telling the truth about himself.

Once in a while, the thumb that fits over the neck of the guitar kinda bothers me a little bit, but not that much yet. I figure in time I won’t do much because of my age.

Jazz musicians have some outlaw in them somewhere.

The true beauty of music is that it connects people.

Good music is good music and everything else can go to hell.

Jazz stands for freedom.

Music and culture are intrinsically improvisational, existential.