Tito Puente

You want the audience to feel what you’re doing.

Love songs last because they are about feelings that don’t change.

I don’t believe that a lot of the things I hear on the air today are going to be played for as long a time as Coleman Hawkins records or Brahms concertos.

I’ve always wanted a C trumpet on top, to have that same kind of facility without shouting.

If music is sound and came from silence, then silence is potentially greater than sound.

I don’t think I ever sing the same way twice. The blues is sort of a mixed-up thing. You just have to feel it. Anything I do sing is part of my life.

Man, all music is folk music. You ain’t never heard no horse sing a song, have you?

If I have to go around telling everyone how great I am, then there’s something wrong with my act.

Using drugs didn’t help me play, all it did was hang me up for 15 years.

Music is a verb.

I thought Eric Clapton was good. He still is. Not only is he good – he’s rock’s #1 guitarist, and he plays blues better than most of us.

I’m still searching even today for a sound, like the guy that’s searching for a home. I haven’t been able to find that completely. I’m satisfied at times with the sound of my guitar… but it is a little sound that I hear but I can’t tell anybody about it. I don’t know how. But if I ever get it, I’ll know.

I’m not going to change the way I look or the way I feel to conform to anything. I’ve always been a freak. So I’ve been a freak all my life and I have to live with that, you know. I’m one of those people.

Only the French, I guess, really use tenor and alto to any great extent in the orchestra.

Jazz is one of the few things you can do in society to express yourself freely and creatively.