Stanley Clarke

I’ve never written a political song. Songs can’t save the world. I’ve gone through all that.

Risk is at the heart of Jazz. Every note we play is a risk.

Music’s a good thing, it calm the beast in the man.

When you just get mixed up and there’s too much going on, then it’s time to pick up your guitar.

There is no doubt that the first requirement for a composer is to be dead

If you listen to Donny Hathaway, he had a lot of jazz elements in the way he sang, … For me, the two styles borrow from each other so much that sometimes it’s hard for me to make a distinction. When you hear Lalah sing the combination, that’s when she really shines – when she’s allowed to dip into her jazz when she wants to and then get soulful and do the R ‘n’ B thing.

Let me whisper it. Let me sigh it. Let me sing it, my dear or I will cry it.

I sing like I feel.

I am not interested in compromising my music to make it palatable to an assumed sub-standard mass.

I heard someone say ‘What’s that kid doing here? Call your piano player and let’s get started.’

Music is the most fantastic drug there is!

After I left Texas and went to California, I had a hard time getting anyone to play anything that I was writing, so I had to end up playing them myself. And that’s how I ended up just being a saxophone player.

Using drugs didn’t help me play, all it did was hang me up for 15 years.

If you can’t play the Blues you might as well hang it up.

I was a singing disc jockey who heard every type of music there was – and loved it all.