Reggie Workman

In this trumpet I hear our icons and the sound of the future.

I haven’t got a great jazz band and I don’t want one. Some of the critics, Down Beat’s among them, point their fingers at us and charge us with forsaking real jazz . . . It’s all in what you define as ‘real jazz.’ It happens that to our ears harmony comes first. A dozen colored bands have a better beat than mine. Our band stresses harmony.

If I’m going to sing like someone else, then I don’t need to sing at all

The louder they [the band] play the softer I sing.

You usually can’t tell what’s inspiring until you look back on it.

I wanted to put jazz on the record, all the loves of music that I had on the record, so I could show people I was ahead of my 19 years. It may have been over the heads of some people.

Talk of God is most often in church. Is there a God outside of church? I hope so. But how should I know? How does anybody know?

Music is a gift and a burden I’ve had since I can remember who I was.

I don’t have to lay on the couch and see a therapist because my therapy is in art.

I am the sum total of everything that I have experienced musically.

The blues was bleeding the same blood as me. The blues didn’t have to explain the mystery of pain that I felt; it was there in the songs and voices of singers like Lonnie Johnson and Blind Lemon Jefferson, in the cries of their guitars.

I love Jazz because it has the perfect balance of discipline and freedom.

I didn’t need to worry about keys, chords, melody if I had that emotion that brought tears and laughter to people’s hearts.

Dog spelled backward is God. That’s pretty heavy.

Just ’cause I’ve forgotten more than I can play, doesn’t mean it’s not Improv.