Music is interior decoration.
The word “jazz” means to me no category, but when you get stuck into wanting to do something the way it was with the “jazz emblem” or logo chained around your neck, you play in a frozen moment in time and you keep fermenting the ‘fifties saying jazz should be this way or that. Well, if jazz to me means no category, then I’ve got the green light And if it sounds like.. sounds like.. sounds like, and keeps crossing over, it’s what I wanted to do in the first place. I like the way Stravinsky and those guys did things. They expressed something, if not themselves. In fact, some people talk about expression, but expression really doesn’t mean anything to me because there’s a lot of work which goes into building a drama and then it’s up to other people to offer “expression.” Expression is such a nebulous thing.
Your humanity is your instrument.
Music should not have any mandates. Jazz is not supposed to be something that is required to sound like jazz.
I always think of music as interior decoration. So, if you have all kinds of music, you are fully decorated!
You know the actor John Garfield? In one movie he walked up to this train station, the ticket booth, and the guy says, ‘Yes, where are you going?’ And he says, ‘I want a ticket to nowhere.’ I thought: that’s it. The freedom to do that. I want a ticket to nowhere.
Clouds float in the same pattern only once.
You hear about the Duke Ellingtons, the Jimmie Luncefords, and the Fletcher Hendersons, but people sometimes forget that jazz was not only built in the minds of the great ones, but on the backs of the ordinary ones.
I am famous because I am an African American jazz artist.
Mozart tapped the source from which all music flows, expressing himself with a spontaneity and refinement and breathtaking rightness.
Jazz music grabs you to the point where it never lets you go until the very last breath.
Hipness is not a state of mind, it’s a fact of life.
Jazz translates the moment into a sense of inspiration for not only the musicians but for the listeners.
I think when my brother (Claude who founded vocal sextet Take Six) got his deal and I saw him on the Grammys that was when I said, ‘oh, you know what? If he can do it then maybe I can do too’ and that’s when I really focused on trying to make it in this business.
One way or the other, if you want to find reasons why you shouldn’t keep on, you’ll find ’em. The obstacles are all there; there are a million of ’em.
If I were to call it black music, that would be untrue. I don’t know what that is, unless it would be some African drums or something.
Life is not about finding our limitations, it’s about finding our infinity.
Count don’t do nothin’. But it sure sounds good.
My audience was my life. What I did and how I did it was all for my audience.
You’re just a little too hip for the room. It’s not good to be too hip because two hips make an ass.
Jazz is a sideways glance at music. It’s like being an architect, knowing the basis of design but understanding that the façade can be whatever you dream. I’m a free person. I don’t want to be tied down.
The time is now.
