Stan Getz

We made records to document ourselves, not to sell a lot of records. I still feel that way. I put out a record because I think it’s beautiful, not necessarily commercial.

Musically, I love to talk just off the top of my head and that’s what Jazz is all about.

I compulsively reach for perfection in music, often at the expense of everything else in my life.

It’s like a language. You learn the alphabet, which are the scales. You learn sentences, which are the chords. And then you talk extemporaneously with the horn. It’s a wonderful thing to speak extemporaneously, which is something I’ve never gotten the hang of. But musically I love to talk just off the top of my head. And that’s what jazz music is all about.

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

I came from an era when we didn’t use electronic instruments. The bass wasn’t even amplified. The sound was the sound you got.

Back in college, when I got kicked out of school, I was still in school, I’d just written the song that got me my record deal. If I hadn’t gotten kicked out of school I wouldn’t be where I am now. Three months after that, I got my record deal and the rest is history.

To be a true artist you have to play the way you feel not the way others think you should feel.

You want the audience to feel what you’re doing.

I would sit on the street corners in my hometown of Indianola, Mississippi, and I would play. And, generally, I would start playing gospel songs. People would come by on the street – you live in Time Square, you know how they do it – they would bunch up. And they would always compliment me on gospel tunes, but they would tip me when I played blues.

Everybody that you could name would join in our audiences from, Laguardia on down. Everybody came. Everybody came to the Cotton Club.

Music is an addiction.

[on Glastonbury] I started off the show and I completely messed up the music. And me, as you can imagine by this phone call, I’m a bit of a perfectionist. So it really put me into a slightly depressed state.

Jazz is an art that makes a person completely naked.

What I’m doing, I prefer to call that jazz, because it is a beautiful word – I love it.

Critics get a little carried away with what someone should have done, rather than what he did.

I don’t care for the music when they’re talking bad about women because I think women are God’s greatest gift to the planet – I just like music.

Music making is the most joyful activity possible, the most perfect expression of any emotion.

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

It’s Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, you know. They got a musical mind together and uh, you can’t explain it.

The fact that an artist is experiencing the joy of creation makes me feel like we’re in it together.