Quotes on Jazz

Don't play what's there, play what's not there.

Sometimes I wish I could walk up to my music for the first time, as if I had never heard it before.

I've had some wonderful love affairs and some that didn't work out. I don't want to dwell on that and I don't want to put people down, but I think all the fabulous places I've been, the wonderful things that have happened for me, the great people I've met - that ought to make a story.

Footballers can be like artists when the mind and body are working as one. It is what Miles Davis does when he plays free jazz - everything pulls together into one intense moment that is beautiful.

Jazz has the power to make men forget their differences and come together... Jazz is the personification of transforming overwhelmingly negative circumstances into freedom, friendship, hope, and dignity.

They're not particular whether you're playing a flat 5th or a ruptured 129th as long as they can dance.

Some kids in Italy call me 'Mama Jazz; I thought that was so cute. As long as they don't call me 'Grandma Jazz.'

I never even thought about whether or not they understand what I'm doing . . . the emotional reaction is all that matters as long as there's some feeling of communication, it isn't necessary that it be understood.

[Lee Morgan] was the only young cat that scared me when he played. He had so much fire and natural feeling. I had more technique, but he had that feeling. People seemed to like him more than they like me at the beginning.

Very few of the men whose names have become great in the early pioneering of jazz and of swing were trained in music at all. They were born musicians: they felt their music and played by ear and memory. That was the way it was with the great Dixieland Five.

My whole life, my whole soul, my whole spirit is to blow that horn.

I lay in that tub on the seventeenth floor of this hotel for-women-only, high up over the jazz and push of New York, for near unto an hour, and I felt myself growing pure again. I don't believe in baptism or the waters of Jordan or anything like that, but I guess I feel about a hot bath the way those religious people feel about holy water.

Jazz is the big brother of Revolution. Revolution follows it around.

Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn. They teach you there's a boundary line to music. But, man, there's no boundary line to art.

Too many jazz pianists limit themselves to a personal style, a trademark, so to speak. They confine themselves to one type of playing. I believe in using the entire piano as a single instrument capable of expressing every possible musical idea. I have no one style. I play as I feel.

Anything you are shows up in your music - jazz is whatever you are, playing yourself, being yourself, letting your thoughts come through.

The whole world loves American movies, blue jeans, jazz and rock and roll. It is probably a better way to get to know our country than by what politicians or airline commercials represent.

There is no art without intention.

I never wanted to be a part of planet Earth, but I am compelled to be here, so anything I do for this planet is because the Master-Creator of the Universe is making me do it. I am of another dimension. I am on this planet because people need me.

And that's the soulful thing about playing: you offer something to somebody. You don't know if they'll like it, but you offer it.

This is our bandstand. If you don't want to play, get up off the instrument and leave.