Stanley Jordan

I have won several prizes as the world’s slowest alto player and a special award in 1961 for quietness.

The whole thing of being in music is not to control it but to be swept away by it.

Rather than say I play Jazz, I simply say I play music.

I don’t care if a dude is purple with green breath as long as he can swing.

I’ve always had a deep love of live performance, it’s when I feel most alive.

All I play is truth and emotion.

Stop before you’re done.

When I got my first guitar my fingers wouldn’t go to the sixth string so I took off the big E and played with just five strings. I was only 6 or 7.

I started in New Orleans music and played all through the history of Jazz.

In Kansas City joints ran 9pm-5am. Pay was a $1.25 a night but somebody special like Count Basie could command $1.50.

If your dreams don’t scare you they’re not big enough!

I can’t listen to music too often. It affects your nerves, makes you want to say stupid nice things and stroke the heads of people who could create such beauty while living in this vile hell.

The value of music is to be able to play one note at the right time in the right way.

My chops were not as fast… [but] I just learned more on what was in my mind than what was in my chops. I learned a long time ago that one note can go a long way if it’s the right one, and it will probably whip the guy with twenty notes.

I am at my core a singer/songwriter a la James Taylor or a la Billy Joel. It’s not that I don’t want to work with people, but I do just love doing my own thing.