Paul Whiteman

He knows I rip him off every day. He’s the godfather for me. Nobody can say they aren’t influenced by what Stevie Wonder has done.

You can have the greatest player in terms of mastering an instrument and be yawning your head off.

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

Finally Beiderbecke took out a silver cornet. He put it to his lips and blew a phrase. The sound came out like a girl saying ‘yes.’

I compulsively reach for perfection in music, often at the expense of everything else in my life.

I like to sleep. There is no set time of day for sleep. You sleep when you’re tired and that’s all there is to it.

I don’t think anybody steals anything; all of us borrow.

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.

Man, if you gotta ask you’ll never know.

I don’t care for the music when they’re talking bad about women because I think women are God’s greatest gift to the planet – I just like music.

When I achieved what I thought the musicians were trying to do, the sound sort of bloomed. When it’s right, everything is beautiful.

Improvisation is the ability to create something very spiritual, something of one’s own.

I’ve always depended upon my own melodic instinct, instead of scale like formulas.

It seems like I always had to work harder than other people. Those nights when everybody else is asleep, and you sit in your room trying to play scales. I just wonder where I was when the talent was being given out, like George Benson, Kenny Burrell, Eric Clapton… oh, there’s many more! I wouldn’t want to be like them, you understand, but I’d like to be equal, if you will.

I worked until I could play and do changes at any tempo in any key and said ‘What else is there?’ Now I’m finding out.