The Blues is never old.
You have to understand the styles and it’s good to study those that came before us.
Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn. They teach you there’s a boundary line to music. But, man, there’s no boundary line to art.
You have to practice improvisation, let no one kid you about it!
There is something about music that keeps its distance even at the moment that it engulfs us. It is at the same time outside and away from us and inside and part of us. In one sense it dwarfs us, and in another we master it. We are led on and on, and yet in some strange way we never lose control.
I don’t care if a dude is purple with green breath as long as he can swing.
Music is interior decoration.
When Jazz broke through in England, I remember sneaking to listen on the radio much to my parent’s disapproval.
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’.
Montreal was a very active jazz center until club owners started putting in strippers instead of music. Before long, there was nothing to hear.
Everyone is working who should be.
Blues is a tonic for whatever ails you. I could play the blues and then not be blue anymore.
I find my inspiration in myself.
Music should enrich the soul; it should teach spirituality by showing a person a portion of himself that he would not discover otherwise. It’s easy to rediscover part of yourself, but through art you can be shown part of yourself you never knew existed. That’s the real mission of art. The artist has to find something within himself that’s universal and which he can put into terms that are communicable to other people. The magic of it is that art can communicate to a person without his realizing it.
Kinship doesn’t come from skin color. It’s in your soul and your mind.
You know at an early age if you have a talent for music.
You’re just as beautiful as you feel.
