Troy (Trombone Shorty) Andrews

People complain about the music industry, but this is a great time to be a musician.

If you have to ask what jazz is, you’ll never know.

A lot of singers think all they have to do is exercise their tonsils to get ahead. They refuse to look for new ideas and new outlets, so they fall by the wayside… I’m going to try to find out the new ideas before the others do.

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

If you understood everything I say, you’d be me!

Inspiration grows into full-scale creation through persistence and imagination.

I started in New Orleans music and played all through the history of Jazz.

I’m on some singer’s record date for a demo and I get a note to call Miles Davis. Of course, I didn’t believe it, but I wasn’t going to take a chance by not calling, and it was Miles. He said, ‘I’ve got a session in an hour over at Columbia, can you make it’

I think that it is important to try to sound like someone, especially early in your development.

A movie and a stage show are two entirely different things. A picture, you can do anything you want. Change it, cut out a scene, put in a scene, take a scene out. They don’t do that on stage.

I never believed in a set routine. It should depend on how you feel, because you play what you feel.

You must surrender whatever preconceptions you have about music if you’re really interested in it.

A wise man practices slowly; but a wiser man practices even slower.

I would sit on the street corners in my hometown of Indianola, Mississippi, and I would play. And, generally, I would start playing gospel songs. People would come by on the street – you live in Time Square, you know how they do it – they would bunch up. And they would always compliment me on gospel tunes, but they would tip me when I played blues.

I’m always looking to create new avenues or new visions of music.