Yogi Berra

No one goes there nowadays, it’s too crowded.

A nickel ain’t worth a dime anymore.

If you’re trying to be hip, be hip!

The piano ain’t got no wrong notes.

Jazz is the assassination, the murdering, the slaying of syncopation. I would even go so far as to confess that we are musical anarchists.

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.

I never heard of a Jazz musician who retired. You love what you do, so what are you going to do… play for the walls?

Anything I do has to be directly related to my music. If it isn’t, I don’t really see a point to it.

You blows who you is.

It was a great thrill to listen every night and hear him on NBC radio. Les played just as great then. And then later on, in the 1950s, Les Paul turned the whole world on to guitar. He’s just a terrific, flashy, tasty guitarist.

In Kansas City joints ran 9pm-5am. Pay was a $1.25 a night but somebody special like Count Basie could command $1.50.

Instrumental music can spread the international language.

Inspiration may be a form of superconsciousness, or perhaps of subconsciousness – I wouldn’t know. But I am sure it is the antithesis of self- consciousness.

What have I got? No looks, no money, no education… just talent.

Music is the great arbiter of the world, the key to central harmony and a necessary requirement of human emotion.

I expect the audience to come up to my level.

[Ben Taylor] He is an interesting combination of the two of us. His voice box is more like mine but the way his tongue sits in his mouth, and the way he pronounces words, is just like James Taylor.