Stan Getz

We recorded to document ourselves, not to sell a lot of records.

My life is music, and in some vague, mysterious and subconscious way, I have always been driven by a taut inner spring which has propelled me to almost compulsively reach for perfection in music, often -in fact, mostly -at the expense of everything else in my life.

There are four qualities essential to a great Jazzman: taste, courage, individuality and irreverence. These are the qualities I want to retain in my music.

I never have any trouble playing anything I can think of. The trouble is thinking of what to play.

Life is too full of distractions nowadays. When I was a kid we had a little Emerson radio and that was it. We were more dedicated. We didn’t have a choice.

Other than conversation, no other art form can give the satisfaction of spontaneous interaction like Jazz.

Playing gives me as much good feeling now as it did when I was a bitty kid.

Django Reinhardt was fantastic. he must have been playing all the time to be that good.

I love to hear the note sing.

To compose music, all you need to do is remember a tune that no one else has thought of.

Never play anything the same way twice.

Keeping your artistic self as creative as possible is a balancing act.

I am the sum total of everything that I have experienced musically.

It’s not what you do, but the way you’re doing it and in the end that’s all that we have.

If you have to ask what jazz is, you’ll never know.

Jazz is known all over the world as an American musical art form and that’s it. No America, no jazz. I’ve seen people try to connect it to other countries, for instance to Africa, but it doesn’t have a damn thing to do with Africa.

People will hire you and then tell you not to do what you were doing when they heard you.

Once you become predictable, no one’s interested anymore.

I loved the feeling that I got singing.

How are you going to know what’s new to play if you haven’t listened to everything that’s old?

Keep searching for that sound you hear in your head until it becomes a reality.