Robert Browning

A minute of success pays for years of failure.

Grow old along with me; the best is yet to be.

That’s where I heard feedback first – from Les Paul. Also vibratos – even before B.B. King, you know. I’ve traced a hell of a lot of rock and roll, little riffs and things, back to Les Paul – it’s all there. I mean, he’s the father of it all: multi-tracking and everything else. If it hadn’t been for him, there wouldn’t have been anything really.

Critics get a little carried away with what someone should have done, rather than what he did.

There’s two things you can’t live without. Water and music.

After two takes you’re imitating yourself.

I say, ‘Play your own way. Don’t play what the public wants. You play what you want and let the public pick up on what you’re doing – even if it does take them fifteen, twenty years’.

We’re here to have a ball.

In classical music, only two people are important, the composer and the conductor. Everybody else is a serf. In jazz, a thing of beauty is created collectively with everybody getting to express an idea. And that reflects what democratic society is – or should be.

In a way, I started out to be a baritone player.

It’s easy in music to tell what’s good. It’s hard to tell what’s bad.

The secret is keeping busy, and loving what you do.

You must surrender whatever preconceptions you have about music if you’re really interested in it.

Jazz is rhythm and meaning.

The Blues and Jazz will live forever. So will the Delta and the Big Easy.

Too many jazz pianists limit themselves to a personal style, a trademark, so to speak. They confine themselves to one type of playing. I believe in using the entire piano as a single instrument capable of expressing every possible musical idea. I have no one style. I play as I feel.

They always want to sell me as a hard bopper.