Steve Turre

You have to understand the styles and it’s good to study those that came before us.

Deep, unspeakable suffering may well be called a baptism, a regeneration, the initiation into a new state.

All music is beautiful.

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

I could see the blues was about survival.

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

All a musician can do is to get closer to the source.

Oh, my darling, it’s incredible, that someone so unforgettable should think I am unforgettable, too.

First of all, I never strive for identity. That’s something that just has happened automatically as a result, I think, of just putting things together, tearing things apart and putting it together my own way, and somehow I guess the individual comes through eventually.

You can’t rehearse a blues darlin’.

As soon as it was understood that we could handle things in our own way, it was the thrill of my life to walk out on that stage with people just hemming the band in.

It’s a matter of who would be right for each song. Mickey Hart for ‘All We Need is An Island’ – he’s the only guy I know who has Tahitian drums and every kind of drum on the planet.

You get that right tickin’ rhythm, man and its ON!

Just give a drum roll, announce my name and I come out and sing. I have a contract that says I’m a singer. So I sing.

Our music is generally the music I would play way back when I was in the record business. So I’ll play World Waiting For The Sunrise and How High The Moon, maybe Over The Rainbow, some standards. But it depends upon the artist that comes up – if people like a certain kind of music, I will focus the show that way. Whoever walks up on to the stage is the star – he is the picture, we are the frame. The frame is there to make the star look better – let’s make this fellow the best he’s ever going to be.

We’re not like pop musicians who have to perform the same top ten tunes every night of a tour.