Nicholas Payton

Jazz music is haunted by its own hungry ghosts.

The real innovators did their innovating by just being themselves.

I wasn’t interested in practicing Bach; I was too busy digging Horace Silver!

Don’t bullshit, just play.

I felt a responsibility to present a viable alternative to the popular electric sound.

How can I turn emotion into knowledge? That’s what I try to do with my horn.

Music allows the great opportunity to play with people you love.

I never really thought about becoming a professional musician.

Judy Garland was the singer I most wanted to sound like then, not to copy, but to get some of her soul and purity. A wonderful young voice.

Jazz affirms the noblest aspirations of character, individual discipline, perseverance and innovation.

You don’t want to play like B. B. King. You want to be you. So what you do is listen to players you like, and try to “borrow” a little bit from each guy. You don’t try to sound exactly like the other guy, you just add the bits to your vocabulary. It’s like learning to read or write.

When you hear somebody with balls, that’s me.

Jazz is not dead, it just smells funny.

A name doesn’t make the music. It’s just called that to differentiate it from other types of music.

Jazz music just resonates with the frequency of me.

I’ve had the pleasure of playing with the baddest Jazz cats on the planet.