Sarah Vaughan

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

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

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

Judy Garland was the singer I most wanted to sound like then, not to copy, but to get some of her soul and purity. A wonderful young voice.

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.

There are notes between notes, you know.

I met up with George Shearing about a year before my mother passed away. When I was 11 years old, Mama took me to the Edgewater Inn in Seattle and I was able to sit down and play piano for George and a lot of (the set list) was songs I had heard from the album, ‘Concerto For My Love.’ Then, after Mama died, my dad and I went to actually hear him perform at the Edgewater Inn when I was 12. Oh my gosh! It just really got me into playing piano.

Musicians have a really big part to play in spreading messages because they’re able to reach a large portion of people on an emotional level. Artists reach people at their heart; it’s the only time we meet in one place and put our differences aside. When you’re in a forum listening to music, all you feel in that moment is love and the understanding.

To me, the guitar cuts through. It carries more than the organ, but the organ has got more guts.

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

Your daddy’s rich and your ma is good lookin’ So hush little baby don’t you cry.

Some people try to get very philosophical and cerebral about what they’re trying to say with jazz. You don’t need any prologues, you just play. If you have something to say of any worth then people will listen to you.

It’s performing without any really set basis for the lines and the content as such emotionally or, specifically, musically. And if you sit down and contemplate what you’re going to do, and take five hours to write five minutes of music, then it’s composed music. Therefore I would put it in the classical or serious, whatever you want to call it, written-music category. So there’s composed music and there’s jazz. And to me anybody that makes music using the process that we are using in Jazz, is playing Jazz.

We didn’t have any segregation at the Cotton Club. No. The Cotton Club was wide open, it was free

The essentials of Jazz are: melodic improvisation, melodic invention, swing and instrumental personality.

We quest for the perfect performance and every note has to be right. Man, every note is not right in life.

To keep a band together you simply need a gimmick. The gimmick I use is to pay them money.

There’s so many ways you can hit one note.

A wise man practices slowly; but a wiser man practices even slower.

Through Dizzy and Bird I began to learn about musical structures and the more theoretical aspects of music.

I can’t sing it straight. I have no choice but to swing it.