Susannah McCorkle

The blues was bleeding the same blood as me. The blues didn’t have to explain the mystery of pain that I felt; it was there in the songs and voices of singers like Lonnie Johnson and Blind Lemon Jefferson, in the cries of their guitars.

We all do ‘do, re, mi’ but you got to find the other notes yourself.

I don’t do something because I think it will sell 30 million albums. I couldn’t care less. If it sells one, it sells one.

The joy of music should never be interrupted by a commercial.

Give it a good go, try to have fun at it, try to pass on some good notes and some good sounds to your fans, and I don’t think you will have wasted your time.

The fact that an artist is experiencing the joy of creation makes me feel like we’re in it together.

It pulled me like a magnet, jazz did, because it was a way that I could express myself.

Music must be an innovation.

90%, 100% are going there to hear the singing. The story is another thing. Nobody’s interested in the story. Happiness is happiness.

It seems like I always had to work harder than other people. Those nights when everybody else is asleep, and you sit in your room trying to play scales. I just wonder where I was when the talent was being given out, like George Benson, Kenny Burrell, Eric Clapton… oh, there’s many more! I wouldn’t want to be like them, you understand, but I’d like to be equal, if you will.

Art is a subject that is inundated with opinions. In fact, that’s all it is about is opinions.

Dizzy used to tell me I’m playing too hard. He’d say to not give everything. Miles told me that too.

Sometimes I wish I could walk up to my music for the first time, as if I had never heard it before.

Everything that happened to me as a child involved music. It was part of everyday life, as automatic as breathing.

Technique is the ability to translate your ideas into sound through your instrument.