Pat Martino

Jazz is the continual pulsation of the now.

If T-Bone Walker had been a woman, I would have asked him to marry me. I’d never heard anything like that before: single-string blues played on an electric guitar.

What are you going to do when you love music? You can’t stop.

I think I love it more as I get older because I keep getting better on drums, vibes and piano.

All I play is truth and emotion.

Blues is a tonic for whatever ails you. I could play the blues and then not be blue anymore.

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.

I started to like blues, I guess, when I was about 6 or 7 years old. There was something about it, because nobody else played that kind of music.

Lionel Richie told me forget about the critics. But if you come back with hit after hit, you don’t have to worry about anything.

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

A Jazz performance centers upon the process of creation. The final objective is not only the finished product, but the path and process taken towards it.

Keep searching for that sound you hear in your head until it becomes a reality.

Don’t give up trying to do what you really want. Where there is love and inspiration, I don’t think you can go wrong.

I let my body play what’s in my heart. I play life instead of notes. I play what I lived.

Risk is at the heart of Jazz. Every note we play is a risk.

The Blues is never old.