Stan Getz

A good quartet is like a good conversation among friends interacting to each other’s ideas.

I cannot play a lie. I have to believe in what I play or it won’t come out.

People involve themselves with the superficiality of Jazz without digging for its soul.

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

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

As far as playing jazz, no other art form, other than conversation, can give the satisfaction of spontaneous interaction.

It became a kind of a game, to remember the things that had happened five minutes ago. I would start making notes about the things I was doing, on an instrument that was foreign to me, the guitar, so it was just a fun way of doing cognitive therapy. I was none the wiser to it until I began to improve and my ability to speak began to come back.

To get the music the way you want it, there’s a lot of work involved.

I’m sure critics have their purpose, and they’re supposed to do what they do, but sometimes they get a little carried away with what they think someone should have done, rather than concerning themselves with what he did.

I never thought about being famous or rich. I just thought, Oh, I’ll get a nice little girl and go and play every night, and I’d be happy. And that worked for a while. But the little girl’s mother didn’t trust a guy with a horn.

I don’t really get nervous, I prepare. When the music messed up in the beginning, it tapped into my nerves and when you’re nervous and vulnerable, something special and something different can happen.

A Les Paul, which is kind of a sissy guitar compared to a Strat anyway. The Les Paul is heavier, but because of that bulk you can do bends on it more easily. Also, the Les Paul’s lack of a vibrato arm means you’re not wrestling against the spring-loaded bridge all the time. The Strat is the ultimate because it’s like having a miniature pedal steel within it. Once you get familiar with it where the bends are and where they meld down into a fourth or whatever, you can do all kinds of pedal-steel-like things, which I think are cool..

I am famous because I am an African American jazz artist.

When Jazz broke through in England, I remember sneaking to listen on the radio much to my parent’s disapproval.

The people who know nothing about music are the ones always talking about it.

I love songs that are very autobiographical.

Jazz is such a powerful cultural statement that it’s almost as if it’s intertwined with society.

All that I’ve played, all that I’ve sung, I couldn’t have done any other way.

Being a singer is a natural gift. It means I’m using to the highest degree possible the gift that God gave me to use. I’m happy with that.

Life is not about finding our limitations, it’s about finding our infinity.

If I don’t practice for a day, I know it… for two days, the critics know it… three days, the public knows it.