Nat King Cole

I started out to become a jazz pianist; in the meantime I started singing and I sang the way I felt and that’s just the way it came out.

Only time, education and plenty of good schooling will make anti-segregation work.

I’m a musician at heart, I know I’m not really a singer. I couldn’t compete with real singers. But I sing because the public buys it.

The whites come to applaud a Negro performer just like the colored do. When you’ve got the respect of white and colored, you can ease a lot of things.

For years the trio did nothing but play for musicians and other hip people. We starved.

Oh, my darling, it’s incredible, that someone so unforgettable should think I am unforgettable, too.

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

If you don’t know what it is, don’t mess with it.

By and large Jazz has always been like the kind of a man you wouldn’t want your daughter to associate with.

Even if you have some brilliant jazz ideas, it’s going to be difficult to get them across unless you have 1-a distinctive sound or 2- a loud sound. These are musts.

I’ve always depended upon my own melodic instinct, instead of scale like formulas.

First I was working on classical music that didn’t move me at all. I hated it. So I decided to discover the kinds of classical music that did move me—like Chopin, Satie, Beethoven, and certain Mozart songs. Mozart would play a counterpart with his left hand while using his right to mock it. It was blue, dark, shadowy and it made me feel something. That’s when I realized music was inside me.

[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.

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?

I never practice my guitar. From time to time I just open the case and throw in a piece of raw meat.

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

There is no doubt that the first requirement for a composer is to be dead

All I wanted was to be big, to be in show business and to travel… and that’s what I’ve been doing all my life.

I’m not really on a mission to tell anybody anything. I’d rather be figured out.

They’re not particular whether you’re playing a flat 5th or a ruptured 129th as long as they can dance.

I have no one style.