To work is to feel alive.
If you follow your passions, you’ll never work a day in your life.
I still insist that American performers are the best performers in the world.
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.
One of the advantages of growing older is you learn what to leave out.
He’s not a performer, he’s not a composer, he’s not even a musician, but Norman Granz is Mr. Jazz.
Only the French, I guess, really use tenor and alto to any great extent in the orchestra.
The great jazz instrumentalists taught me how to sing and interpret a song. they showed me how a horn can have as much personality as an actor.
Miles Davis is one who writes songs when he plays.
Its the group sound thats important, even when youre playing a solo. You not only have to know your own instrument, you must know the others and how to back them up at all times. Thats jazz.
Jazz music is a style, not compositions; any kind of music may be played in Jazz if one has the knowledge.
Jazz is an art form that depends on its antecedents. There must be respect for the people that have gone before.
Being so inescapably a part of it, I’ll never know what the listener gets, what the listener feels and that’s too bad.
People will always need love, romance, a tender touch and really personal and deeply felt music.
Music is the tool to express life – and all that makes a difference.
No one is original. Everyone is derivative.
I played in rhumba bands, mickey mouse bands; all kinds of bands.
Creativity and artistic endeavors have a mission far beyond just making music for the sake of music.
As long as musicians have passion for spontaneity and creating something that’s never been before, Jazz will flourish.
I play as I feel.
