Stan Getz

Records used to be documents, but now record companies want product.

My dark sound could be heard across a room clearer than somebody with a reedy sound. It had more projection. My sound always seemed to fill a room.

You don’t rehearse Jazz to death to get the camera angles.

I compulsively reach for perfection in music, often 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.

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.

I’ve never thought the blues was a matter of copying other people. The blues singer should sing songs about his own life. And once the ball got rolling, I felt confident enough to do that as well as cover other people’s songs, and the tributes. You’ve got to think about representing your own life in the music, and for me that meant bringing in an element of jazz; I was brought up on jazz, it was my father’s work, it was in the house.

I play whatever the hell comes out… that’s it.

There are a million good tunes.

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.

I don’t have a favorite song that I’ve written. But I do have a favorite song: ‘Always on My Mind,’ the Willie Nelson version. If I could sing it like he do, I would sing it every night. I like the story it tells.

I try to practice with my life.

I get interested in the various ways that music is being done in the culture, and some of it I like thoroughly enough to want to learn about it. The way I have been successful at doing that is to become part of it.

The qualities in music I consider most important are beauty, simplicity, originality, discrimination and sincerity.

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

The point of Jazz is, you do something and then you go on.

I have younger friends who don’t work and they aren’t doing so well. My secret is to keep going, keep working.

You can’t explain Jazz to anyone without losing the experience because it’s feeling, not words.

You want the listener to find the song on their own, give too much away and it takes away from the imagination.

Those who were seen dancing were thought insane by those who could not hear the music.

Women have not been socialized to play drums. It’s not natural for us to hit thing.