Steve Swallow

While many attempts have been made to define Jazz, what’s the point really. Jazz is to be experienced – period.

Just don’t give up trying to do what you really want to do. Where there is love and inspiration, I don’t think you can go wrong.

If you have something to say of any worth then people will listen to you.

Every time I see a musician – it doesn’t matter what age – that inspires me, there’s always a secret little wish that maybe we’ll play together, because that’s how I learn and grow and so forth, you know. But hopefully there’s a lot more.

If you think it, want it, dream it… then it’s real. You are what you feel.

You don’t have to live the blues to play the blues.

If I’m going to sing like someone else, then I don’t need to sing at all

You hear about the Duke Ellingtons, the Jimmie Luncefords, and the Fletcher Hendersons, but people sometimes forget that jazz was not only built in the minds of the great ones, but on the backs of the ordinary ones.

It is Jazz’s very nature to change, to develop and adapt to the circumstances of its environment.

I say, ‘Play your own way. Don’t play what the public wants. You play what you want and let the public pick up on what you’re doing – even if it does take them fifteen, twenty years’.

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

I’m very shy, and I shy away from people. But the moment I hit the stage, it’s a different feeling I get nerve from somewhere; maybe it’s because it’s something I love to do.

You have to practice improvisation, let no one kid you about it!

Well if I could play like Wynton Marsalis, I wouldn’t play like Wynton.

Let your life be your music and let your music be your life.