Steve Lacy

I still love the whole history of Jazz. The old things sound better than ever.

People don’t want to suffer. They want to sound good immediately and this is one of the biggest problems.

Jazz is like wine. When it is new it’s only for the experts, but when it gets older everybody wants it.

Jazz musician is a combination entertainer, poet, singer, educator, student, artist, seducer and all-round good fellow.

In composition you have all the time you want to decide what to say in 15 seconds, in improvisation you have 15 seconds.

In fifteen seconds the difference between composition and improvisation is that in composition you have all the time you want to decide what to say in fifteen seconds, while in improvisation you have fifteen seconds.

I never had much interest in the piano until I realized that every time I played, a girl would appear on the piano bench to my left and another to my right.

If I could sell 500 million records every time, it would be great. But I’ve also had the luxury experience of having it when I was a teenager, in a very kind of model version of it.

No two people on earth are alike, and it’s got to be that way in music or it isn’t music.

I just think swing is a matter of some good things put together that you can really pat your foot by. I can’t define it beyond that.

..I wanted to create music that was so different that my mother could tell me from anyone else.

Keep on listening and tapping your feet.

I think when my brother (Claude who founded vocal sextet Take Six) got his deal and I saw him on the Grammys that was when I said, ‘oh, you know what? If he can do it then maybe I can do too’ and that’s when I really focused on trying to make it in this business.

The beauty of Jazz is that it’s malleable. People address it to suit their own personalities.

Critics don’t buy records. They get ’em free.

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.

Every day I look forward to getting with my instruments, trying new things.

Jazz is the assassination, the murdering, the slaying of syncopation. I would even go so far as to confess that we are musical anarchists.

Musicians need to continue higher learning try to expand the pallet.

There is nothing more stuntastic than rapping in front of an orchestra.

One minute we’re over here, the next minute we’re doing something completely different. But it’s interesting because you are producing so many things you couldn’t do with analog.