Oliver Wendell Holmes

The right to swing my fist ends where the other man’s nose begins.

It bugs me when people try to analyze Jazz as an intellectual theorem. It’s not, it’s feeling.

Everybody has somebody that they patterned themselves after.

Your accompanist has a lot to do with how you sing, so experiment and choose your partner wisely.

Musicians have the intimacy of bringing two people together and the aesthetic, romantic transference.

I only knew classical music, which to me was the only true music. The only way I could survive at the bar was to mix the classical music with popular songs, and that meant I had to sing. What happened was that I discovered I had a voice plus the talent to mix classical music together with more popular songs, which at the time I detested.

Is there a meaning to music? Yes. Can you state in so many words what the meaning is? No.

Jazz means many things to many people, but it’s all about choices.

If everyone liked what I did, I probably wouldn’t be playing anything of depth.

Technique is the ability to translate your ideas into sound through your instrument.

Too many young musicians today want to win polls before they learn their instruments.

I gave it my absolute everything I had in that howl at the start of the song. And then B. B. King opened up his mouth and I felt like a girl. We had learned and absorbed, but the more we tried to be like B.B., the less convincing we were.

Rather than say I play Jazz, I simply say I play music.

I feel I have only scratched the surface of what I know I am capable of doing.

Pop doesn’t really look back. It can’t. What makes pop work is simplicity.

Jazz is letting everybody do his or her thing with the music.