To work is to feel alive.
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.
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.
Albert King wasn’t my brother in blood, but he sure was my brother in Blues!
I hope my recordings of my own works won’t inhibit other people’s performances. The brutal fact is that one doesn’t always get the exact tempo one wants, although one improves with experience.
When I cannot sing my heart, I can only speak my mind.
I don’t know what they’re thinking about. Just because someone says, ‘I like what you do’ or something: They might like it today and tomorrow they might not. I’ve had that experience with record companies.
Your ear is the final judge to what sounds right and what sounds wrong.
In the 1990s, with Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston, those really big female artists were very glamorous, it was all about the glamour at that time. And so there was a big switch, the desire to be more who you were, not so beholden to this whole standard of beauty. It was a liberation. You see Mary J Blige – she did the same, wearing the combat boots.
Jazz improvisation is the art of collective negotiated expression.
When you want ’em you can’t get ’em, when you’ve got ’em, you don’t want ’em.
As long as musicians have passion for spontaneity and creating something that’s never been before, Jazz will flourish.
I started in New Orleans music and played all through the history of Jazz.
I love Jazz because it has the perfect balance of discipline and freedom.
Jazz is such a powerful cultural statement that it’s almost as if it’s intertwined with society.
Jazz is a mental attitude rather than a style. It uses a certain process of the mind expressed spontaneously through some musical instrument. I’m concerned with retaining that process.
Whatever else has been said about me personally is unimportant. When I sing, I believe I’m honest.
Jazz is there and gone. It happens. You have to be present for it. That simple.
