Oscar Peterson

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

Some people try to get very philosophical and cerebral about what they’re trying to say with jazz. You don’t need any prologues, you just play. If you have something to say of any worth then people will listen to you.

We’re not like pop musicians who have to perform the same top ten tunes every night of a tour.

I believe in using the entire piano as a single instrument capable of expressing every possible musical idea.

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

It’s the group sound that’s important, even when you’re playing a solo. You not only have to know your own instrument, you must know the others and how to back them up at all times. That’s jazz.

All this is saying is, OK I see now, the ‘hood does not quite want Shirley Bassey yet, so let me still give them this. Crack Music was made after Diamonds. After black people were like, ‘I don’t know about this one.’ It was like me reaching too high for the cookie jar.

If a jazz player is really playing, the classical player will have to respect him.

The Blues contain so much joy and sadness at the same time.

You can’t listen to what people who aren’t musical have to say. When Anytime was released, I had bad reviews, and at first I was hurt. Your songs are like your children. You don’t want to hear, ‘Your kid is ugly.’ But I knew the record was good and it would sell.

The music scene is more competitive in the States.

Music does not come to you. You have to come to it and you’ll walk away with something you didn’t have before.

So long as the human spirit thrives on this planet, music in some living form will accompany and sustain it and give it expressive meaning.

I think of guitar players in terms of doctors: you have the doctor for your heart, the cardiologist, then one that works on your feet, your leg. But I believe George Benson is the one that plays all over. To me, he would be the M.D. of them all.

Play what you know and then play above that.

Music gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and charm and gaiety to life.

Jazz music grabs you to the point where it never lets you go until the very last breath.

People love us when we play what we want to play but we’re starving.

Musically, I love to talk just off the top of my head and that’s what Jazz is all about.

Don’t play what’s there, play what’s not there.

If music is sound and came from silence, then silence is potentially greater than sound.