Wes Montgomery

To me, the guitar cuts through. It carries more than the organ, but the organ has got more guts.

If a jazz player is really playing, the classical player will have to respect him.

I never practice my guitar. From time to time I just open the case and throw in a piece of raw meat.

When I got pretty good I went on the road with a group. We starved.

The genius of our country is improvisation, and jazz reflects that. It’s our great contribution to the arts.

Sometimes you need to stand with your nose to the window and have a good look at Jazz.

At times as a performer they segregated us in some of theatres.

When Hank Jones had his night off, I would get somebody to take my place as intermission pianist and I’d play the show with Ella, so I would get a chance to play with Ray Brown and Charlie Smith as well.

Man, as long as people want to hear Jazz, I’ll give it to them.

Let me whisper it. Let me sigh it. Let me sing it, my dear or I will cry it.

People who like Jazz feel the depth and soul and intelligence that the music expresses.

I am the sum total of everything that I have experienced musically.

It became a kind of a game, to remember the things that had happened five minutes ago. I would start making notes about the things I was doing, on an instrument that was foreign to me, the guitar, so it was just a fun way of doing cognitive therapy. I was none the wiser to it until I began to improve and my ability to speak began to come back.

For me, the Les Paul is the greatest rock ‘n’ roll guitar of all time. If you’re not playing a Gibson guitar and you’re playing this kind of music, whether it’s punk, metal or anything grounded in rock ‘n’ roll, you’re not really doing it right. I don’t think professionally I’d every play anything else. Gibson, thank you for making greatest guitars ever.

I write songs about real things… The subject dictates the mood and it goes from there, really.

I like to sleep. There is no set time of day for sleep. You sleep when you’re tired and that’s all there is to it.

You can have the greatest player in terms of mastering an instrument and be yawning your head off.

I don’t need words. It’s all in the phrasing.

We’re here to have a ball.