Sarah Vaughan

When I sing, trouble can sit right on my shoulder and I don’t even notice.

What was the competition? Well, I remember this Puerto Rican who came out in a short skirt and a gun.

There’s a category for me. I like to be referred to as a good singer of good songs in good taste.

There are notes between notes, you know.

My dream is to do whatever I want without any interference from the record company.

They always ask me the same questions. Where was I born? When did I start singing? Who have I worked with? I don’t understand why they can’t just talk to me without all that question bit.

The greatest moments of the human spirit may be deduced from the greatest moments in music.

I say this because it’s a good message to give to young talents who feel as I used to. You hear musicians playing with great fluidity and complete conception early on, and you don’t have that ability. I didn’t. I had to know what I was doing. And ultimately it turned out that these people weren’t able to carry their thing very far. I found myself being more attracted to artists who have developed through the years and become better and deeper musicians.I believe in things that are developed through hard work.

Jazz is not gonna be a dinosaur and stay around in one form.

I like an element of chaos in music. That feeling is the best thing ever.

Typically I go in the studio and whatever I’m contemplating that day will wind up being a song. I don’t come in with lyrics… I just go in and let it happen.

I always liked the steel guitar. I also love the guys that play the bottleneck. But I could never do it; I never made it do what I want. So every time I would pick up the guitar, I ‘d shake my hand and trill it a bit. For some strange reason my ears would say to me that sounds similar to what those guys were doing. I can’t pick up the guitar now without doing it. So that’s how I got into making my sound. It was nothing pretty. Just trying to please myself. I heard that sound.

The challenge to the improvisor is to get permanence into his spontaneity. The challenge to the composer is to get spontaneity into his permanence.

Knowledge speaks, wisdom listens.

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 can’t copy anybody and end with anything. If you copy, it means you’re working without any real feeling.

In Europe, they like everything you do. The mistakes and everything. That’s a little bit too much.

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

Jazz attracted me because in it I found a formal perfection and instrumental precision I admire in classical music, but which popular music doesn’t have.

I write songs about real things… The subject dictates the mood and it goes from there, really.

Bass players are always the intellectual kind, but nobody knows it.