Ray Charles

The fact of the matter is, you don’t give up what’s natural. Anything I’ve fantasized about, I’ve done.

Music’s been around a long time, and there’s going to be music long after Ray Charles is dead. I just want to make my mark, leave something musically good behind. If it’s a big record, that’s the frosting on the cake, but music’s the main meal.

Learning to read music in Braille and play by ear helped me develop a damn good memory.

Learning to read music in Braille and play by ear helped me develop a damn good memory.

I was born with music inside me. Music was one of my parts. Like my ribs, my kidneys, my liver, my heart. Like my blood. It was a force already within me when I arrived on the scene. It was a necessity for me-like food or water.

What makes my approach special is that I do different things. I do jazz, blues, country music and so forth. I do them all, like a good utility man.

I do the best I can with any instrument I get attracted to. But they’re just tools in order for you to express yourself and that’s really the upshot of it.

You have to practice improvisation, let no one kid you about it!

Jazz music is the power of now.

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.

Everybody did something. It was very entertaining. We had a lot of fun. Lot of fun. And there was no segregation, that I could see. I never saw any.

It’s about getting the sound to flow from your body and allowing that sound to get to the piano.

If you got up on the bandstand at Minton’s and couldn’t play, you might get your ass kicked.

Play the way you’d like to be and soon you’ll be the way you play.

Music is like wine, the less you know about it the sweeter you like it. 

Music is the greatest communication in the world.

Just allow your feelings to go with the music and you’ll find yourself carried along by it fairly quickly.

It’s Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, you know. They got a musical mind together and uh, you can’t explain it.

I never have any trouble playing anything I can think of. The trouble is thinking of what to play.

Jazz is a living music; since its beginning has expressed the feelings, dreams and hopes of the people.

Musicianship is using your two ears.