Ornette Coleman

I’ve had those people very interested in my writing. Since I think of myself as a composer, I feel really good. I’ve had lots of guys call me up. I’ve gotten two or three commissions to write things. I’ve written lots of movie scores.

I never thought about being famous or rich. I just thought, Oh, I’ll get a nice little girl and go and play every night, and I’d be happy. And that worked for a while. But the little girl’s mother didn’t trust a guy with a horn.

The violin, the saxophone, the trumpet: Each makes a very different sound but the very same notes. That’s pretty heavy, you know ? Imagine how many different races make up the human race. I’m called colored, you’re called white, he’s called something else. We still got an asshole and a mouth. Pardon me.

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

I wasn’t so interested in being paid. I wanted to be heard. That’s why I’m broke.

Musicians tell me, if what I’m doing is right, they should never have gone to school.

In fact, I heard Bird first, and had got well into listening to him. You know, it’s the kind of accidental thing that awareness of a player is: what’s available, what somebody happens to play for you.

He’s not a performer, he’s not a composer, he’s not even a musician, but Norman Granz is Mr. Jazz.

I’ve always felt rock and roll was very, very wholesome music.

I’ve had a lot of things to be proud of in my life, but none more than the Jazz festival.

Music and life are all about style.

I had an affinity for music and could play anything I heard on the piano, but I wasn’t scholastically advanced in any way. It was more of a habitual tendency. I would work on weekends at piano bars playing jazz when I was an art student, but the music wasn’t mine – it was covers: everything from Radiohead to really old jazz. But other than that, the only training I had was piano lessons from when I was nine until I was eleven.

If you feel like tapping your feet, tap your feet. If you feel like clapping your hands, clap your hands. And if you feel like taking off your shoes, take off your shoes. We are here to have a ball. So we want you to leave your worldly troubles outside and come in here and swing.

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.

If you’re making money people don’t think you’re playing Jazz. When you’re not making money they think you’re a great Jazz musician.

People will always need love, romance, a tender touch and really personal and deeply felt music.

After you’ve done all the work and prepared as much as you can, what the hell, you might as well go out and have a good time.

All that I’ve played, all that I’ve sung, I couldn’t have done any other way.

The Blues is never old.

I don’t do something because I think it’ll sell 30 million albums. I couldn’t care less if it sells just one.

Jazz is the most fun you can have with your clothes on.