Music chooses her musicians.
You know at an early age if you have a talent for music.
Your humanity is your instrument.
Jazz is not background music. You must concentrate in order to get the most out of it. You must absorb it.
There is something about music that keeps its distance even at the moment that it engulfs us. It is at the same time outside and away from us and inside and part of us. In one sense it dwarfs us, and in another we master it. We are led on and on, and yet in some strange way we never lose control.
There are four qualities essential to a great Jazzman: taste, courage, individuality and irreverence. These are the qualities I want to retain in my music.
The thing to judge in any jazz artist is, does the man project and does he have ideas.
Music has to be accessible.
In order to compose, all you need to do is remember a tune that no one else has thought of.
A Jazz Diet will make you hipper, thinner, taller, smarter, richer, happier and more attractive to members of both sexes.
You should never be comfortable, man. Being comfortable fouled up a lot of musicians.
For me, the Les Paul is the greatest rock n’ roll guitar of all time. If you’re not playing a Gibson guitar and you’re playing this kind of music, whether it’s punk, metal or anything grounded in rock n’ roll, you’re not really doing it right. I don’t think professionally I’d every play anything else. Gibson, thank you for making greatest guitars ever.
I saw a vibraphone for the first time and knew immediately I had found my means of expression.
Silence is what makes music sexy. I just move blocks of silence around. The notes are an afterthought.
I think music needs to be of its time and speak to that time.
Wes Montgomery played impossible things on the guitar because it was never pointed out to him that they were impossible.
I hate straight singing. I have to change a tune to my own way of doing it. That’s all I know
