Wes Montgomery

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

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

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

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

But the guitar, my lady, whether well played or badly played, well strung or badly strung, is pleasant to hear and listen to; being so easy to learn, it attracts the busiest of talented people and makes them put aside loftier occupations so that they may hold a guitar in their hands.

Hipness is not a state of mind, it’s a fact of life.

My music is the spiritual expression of what I am: my faith, my knowledge, my being.

My music had roots which I’d dug up from my own childhood, musical roots buried in the darkest soil.

Anyone who doesn’t give [his debut album, The College Dropout] a perfect score is lowering the integrity of the magazine

There are notes between notes, you know.

The only award I’ve ever worked for or wanted really were the ones that were given to me by the fans. So, whether it’s a platinum record or hit songs, those are the ones that last the most.

People will hire you and then tell you not to do what you were doing when they heard you.

And as long as people have problems, the blues can never die.

There’s a way of playing safe, there’s a way of using tricks and there’s the way I like to play which is dangerously where you’re going to take a chance on making mistakes in order to create something you haven’t created before.

To be a true artist you have to play the way you feel not the way others think you should feel.

I’m not much on gimmicks. I never have been because they don’t last.

Well if I could play like Wynton, I wouldn’t play like Wynton.

Kinship doesn’t come from skin color. It’s in your soul and your mind.

After I left Texas and went to California, I had a hard time getting anyone to play anything that I was writing, so I had to end up playing them myself. And that’s how I ended up just being a saxophone player.