Woody Herman

I’m going to be on the road for the rest of my life.

If you have something to say of any worth then people will listen to you.

An entertainer pleases others while an artist only has to please himself.

You know at an early age if you have a talent for music.

I never thought about being famous or rich. I just thought, Oh, I’ll get a nice little girl and go and play every night, and I’d be happy. And that worked for a while. But the little girl’s mother didn’t trust a guy with a horn.

[on B.B. King] He is without a doubt the most important artist the blues has ever produced, and the most humble and genuine man you would ever wish to meet. In terms of scale or stature, I believe that if Robert Johnson was reincarnated, he is probably B.B. King.

A beat is a moment in the life a groove.

I felt a responsibility to present a viable alternative to the popular electric sound.

Music allows the great opportunity to play with people you love.

Jazz is rhythm and meaning.

I think I love it more as I get older because I keep getting better on drums, vibes and piano.

Some people try to get very philosophical and cerebral about what they’re trying to say with jazz. You don’t need any prologues, you just play. If you have something to say of any worth then people will listen to you.

I had an affinity for music and could play anything I heard on the piano, but I wasn’t scholastically advanced in any way. It was more of a habitual tendency. I would work on weekends at piano bars playing jazz when I was an art student, but the music wasn’t mine – it was covers: everything from Radiohead to really old jazz. But other than that, the only training I had was piano lessons from when I was nine until I was eleven.

The most important thing I look for in a musician is whether he knows how to listen.

Today Jazz music is performed and listened to by people of all ethnicity, backgrounds, ages and creeds.

Everything that happened to me as a child involved music. It was part of everyday life, as automatic as breathing.