Sam Rivers

The main thing is you want to emote.

Early on, I figured out that when the top of a guitar is vibrating and a string is vibrating, you’ve got a conflict. One of them has got to stop, and it can’t be the string, because that’s making the sound. So in 1934, I asked the Larson Brothers—Chicago instrument makers—to build me a guitar with a half-inch-thick maple top and no f-holes. They thought I was crazy.

If you like an instrument that sings, play the saxophone. At its best it’s like the human voice

When the label came to me to say, ‘would you like to do another record,’ I said, ‘Well I got these sixteen songs sitting here, so let’s do it.’ And that was pretty much it… I never stopped writing, it’s just the way that the business is now; you just try to find a different model.

Jazz will only go where we the composers and musicians take it. It is up to us.

I am only a mixture of countless influences and thanks to that I am able to find my own style of playing.

This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.

I always wanted to be a spontaneous composer.

My job is to write songs that have emotional meaning to me.

Improvisation is the most widespread of all musical activities. Why did so many people spend so long pretending it never happened?

The Blues contain so much joy and sadness at the same time.

I would like to thank my father who discouraged me from playing the violin at an early age.

If a player is pushing their ability, a certain amount of failure is inevitable. Maybe even desirable.

You can’t listen to what people who aren’t musical have to say. When Anytime was released, I had bad reviews, and at first I was hurt. Your songs are like your children. You don’t want to hear, ‘Your kid is ugly.’ But I knew the record was good and it would sell.

Jazz is not to be sliced into bites by mass marketing geniuses who assume we are mindless cattle.

Joe’s been my drummer for 14 years, and we’ve been buddies for six years.