Ray Brown

I went up to his [Hank Jones’] house and there were four guys there: Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, and Max Roach. Not a bad place to be. Scared shitless, but a nice place to be on my second day in New York.

Jazz is a complete lifestyle, something that you feel, something that you live.

The better it gets, the fewer of us know it.

I’d solo on my guitar; then sing; then solo; then sing some more. one stopped when the other started. That way I felt a continuity, not a conflict, like a wheel that keeps turning. Both sounds – guitar and voice – were coming out of me, but they issued from different parts of my soul.

I’ve never thought the blues was a matter of copying other people. The blues singer should sing songs about his own life. And once the ball got rolling, I felt confident enough to do that as well as cover other people’s songs, and the tributes. You’ve got to think about representing your own life in the music, and for me that meant bringing in an element of jazz; I was brought up on jazz, it was my father’s work, it was in the house.

Jazz is an art form that depends on its antecedents. There must be respect for the people that have gone before.

When rock came in, people didn’t know what to do. Even Sinatra, he didn’t know what to do. The music was changing. And it’s changing now.

Jazz is not just music, it’s a way of life, it’s a way of being, a way of thinking… The new inventive phrases we make up to describe things – all that to me is jazz just as much as the music we play.

Writing is allowing the musical idea to speak for itself.

Your own music comes out of your head and emotions, but it’s not etched in your system.

If there is no dance, there is not music.

Just to keep it interesting I’ll tune the guitar randomly, so I don’t know what’s going to come out.

If the bass plays the root, a pianist superimposes a Maj7 built on the 5th and the sax plays the 13th, will hot women notice?

Art [Blakey] would take young people with a potential and help them develop a voice as a player and as a writer.

If you’re trying to be hip, be hip!

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

T-Bone was, to me, that sound of being in heaven.

Women have not been socialized to play drums. It’s not natural for us to hit thing.