Don’t bullshit, just play.
Music does not come to you. You have to come to it and you’ll walk away with something you didn’t have before.
Find the best teachers, listen to the finest playing and try to emulate that. Be true to the music.
Don’t settle for style. Succeed in substance.
In Jazz, improvisation isn’t a matter of just making any ol’ thing up. Jazz, like any language, has its own grammer and vocabulary. There’s no right or wrong, just some choices that are better than others.
A beat is a moment in the life a groove.
I wanted to make somebody feel like Coltrane made me feel.
I became a singer to sing my songs. They’re so hip who else is going to sing them?
Music isn’t just learning notes and playing them. You learn notes to play the music of your soul.
You can’t rehearse a blues darlin’.
To me, singing is like talking. If it ain’t natural, it ain’t right.
I’m not playing for other musicians. We’re trying to reach the guy who works all day and wants to spend a buck at night. We’ll keep him happy.
We made records to document ourselves, not to sell a lot of records. I still feel that way. I put out a record because I think it’s beautiful, not necessarily commercial.
I write about moments, and I don’t make blanket statements about anything because no one has all the answers; nobody’s come up with a foolproof way to do anything when it comes to emotions.
I believe in using the entire piano as a single instrument capable of expressing every possible musical idea.
Kinship doesn’t come from skin color. It’s in your soul and your mind.
They’re not particular about whether you’re playing a flatted fifth or a ruptured 129th as long as they can dance to it.
We’re not like pop musicians who have to perform the same top ten tunes every night of a tour.
If you feel like tapping your feet, tap your feet.
Im believe that all people are in possession of what might be called a universal musical mind.
You can’t seperate modern jazz from rock or from rhythm and blues – you can’t seperate it. Because that’s where it all started, and that’s where it all come from – that’s where I learned to keep rhythm – in church.
The audience, they’re not professionals. They just love music. It isn’t necessary to play over their heads to be admired.
