To work is to feel alive.
If you follow your passions, you’ll never work a day in your life.
One of the advantages of growing older is you learn what to leave out.
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.
I still insist that American performers are the best performers in the world.
Leo wanted me to be partners with him – for it to be the Fender guitar: the Les Paul Fender. When he approached me with the idea, he brought over a guitar and he gave it to me and I have it here. And I thought, if I’m gonna do this I’m going to go with the biggest company in the world: Gibson. Why should I fool around with some guy who is not a musician – I should go to the Gibson people.
Deep, unspeakable suffering may well be called a baptism, a regeneration, the initiation into a new state.
If you find a note tonight that sounds good, play the same damn note every night!
For me, the main thing is spontaneity and taking chances.
When I cannot sing my heart, I can only speak my mind.
If you have to ask what jazz is, you’ll never know.
Jazz is music made by and for people who have chosen to feel good in spite of conditions.
We usually never got out of there before four or five o’clock in the morning. Every morning. So it was rough.
Every day I look forward to getting with my instruments, trying new things.
If a player is pushing their ability, a certain amount of failure is inevitable. Maybe even desirable.
We don’t talk music. We just play.
Stop before you’re done.
Play it f**kin’ loud!
I am a writer – that is what I am before being a performer or musician. I love waking up in the morning and then going to sleep that night with something that did not exist.
Jazz music has always been a place where anything is possible.
