Roy Haynes

Anyone can make the simple complicated. Creativity is making the complicated simple.

A great song can pull me out of a slump and lighten my heart.

Composers tend to assume that everyone loves music. Surprisingly enough, everyone doesn’t.

Jazz music is an aural souvenir of mankind’s attempt to express the intangible, the heart, the soul, through art.

I feel I have only scratched the surface of what I know I am capable of doing.

Jazz is the continual pulsation of the now.

Live music is best! Make plans to get out and support your local Jazz scene.

I’m more careful about my hands than about what I eat and most anything else, because my hands have been my living. My hands have been able to help me learn. My hands have taken me around the world. So I’m very proud of my hands.

Working with Benny was important for me and for black musicians in general.

I don’t like to look back because the whole point in Jazz is doing it now.

People may say I can’t sing, but no one can ever say I didn’t sing.

I don’t really look at my career in terms of highlights and low lights. I think I’m at this place right now and to be at this place right now I’ve had to go through many obstacles and lots of highs and lows and for me it’s about the entire journey.

I love to hear the note sing.

I often wonder whether Negroes like myself who are pretty well known help out at all in breaking down barriers.

I remember Elvis as a young man hanging around the Sun Studios. Even then, I knew this kid had a tremendous talent. He was a dynamic young boy. His phraseology, his way of looking at a song, was as unique as Sinatra’s. I was a tremendous fan, and had Elvis lived, there would have been no end to his inventiveness.