Yusef Lateef

My music is Jazz.

You don’t know what love is, until you’ve learned the meaning of the blues, until you’ve loved a love you’ve had to lose.

It was when I found out I could make mistakes that I knew I was on to something.

I heard someone say ‘What’s that kid doing here? Call your piano player and let’s get started.’

Being so inescapably a part of it, I’ll never know what the listener gets, what the listener feels and that’s too bad.

I would like you to know, I am a doctor of music.

It’s spontaneity that has always characterized Jazz music’s finest improvisers.

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.

Leo wanted me to be partners with him – for it to be the Fender guitar: the Les Paul Fender. When he approached me with the idea, he brought over a guitar and he gave it to me and I have it here. And I thought, if I’m gonna do this I’m going to go with the biggest company in the world: Gibson. Why should I fool around with some guy who is not a musician – I should go to the Gibson people.

I think I’ve tried to stay true to my music since the beginning. It’s kind of hard because of the access and technology but I just do what I do.

It’s not uncomfortable for me to be a sideman, but I feel more comfortable as a bandleader.

If you feel like tapping your feet, tap your feet.

I say, ‘Play your own way. Don’t play what the public wants. You play what you want and let the public pick up on what you’re doing – even if it does take them fifteen, twenty years’.

It’s just exciting to be part of something that is brand-new.

Breathe…. breathe a lot!

Tomorrow you’ll wish you had practiced harder today.