Jazz is not background music. You must concentrate in order to get the most out of it. You must absorb it..
Anytime a person can play the blues, he has a soul and he has a 'lift' to play anything else he wants to play. It's sort of like the foundation to a ….
We all have to open our minds, stretch forth, take chances and venture out musically to try and arrive at something new and different..
Basically my influences have been American influences. It's been blues, gospel, swing era music, bebop music, Broadway show music, classical music. I….
I anticipated all the changes in jazz because they were all problematical things, that I was dealing with myself. In New York in the late '50s, there….
What have I got? No looks, no money, no education. Just talent..
I don't like country music, but I don't mean to denigrate those who do. And for the people who like country music, denigrate means 'put down'..
I like chords that are very lush with all the lush parts taken out..
Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom..
The poet Muriel Rukeyser said the universe is composed of stories, not of atoms. The physicist Werner Heisenberg declared that the universe is made o….
To study music, we must learn the rules. To create music, we must break them..
People ask me to describe how I play, and the most obvious answer is that I'm a jazz influenced guitar player. But I'm not a jazz guitar player. Wes ….
When I joined the trio, it was as if I was capable of driving a sports car at 60, but Ray Brown and Oscar Peterson just kept pressing the pedal down,….
Words make you think a thought. Music makes you feel a feeling. A song makes you feel a thought..
Erik Satie does not say the opposite of Debussy; he says the same thing only the other way round..
Jazz is a beautiful word. I love it..
Let me die to the sounds of the delicious music..
My driving philosophy about making music is that you can reduce it all down to one note if that note is played with the right kind of sincerity..
Charlie Christian showed me a lot, and was a great help, but even then, I realised that if I was going to make it, it was no use copying Charlie.
When a singer truly feels and experiences what the music is all about, the words will automatically ring true..
he signed his work .. you could always tell when it was Herb Ellis playing.