Ray Brown

Jazz is a complete lifestyle, something that you feel, something that you live.

I went up to his [Hank Jones’] house and there were four guys there: Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, and Max Roach. Not a bad place to be. Scared shitless, but a nice place to be on my second day in New York.

Jazz is something you have to feel, something you have to live.

Jazz is letting everybody do his or her thing with the music.

A name doesn’t make the music. It’s just called that to differentiate it from other types of music.

I can play all I know in eight bars.

After two takes you’re imitating yourself.

One shouldn’t be in the habit of quoting oneself.

I don’t compose. I assemble materials.

Our music is generally the music I would play way back when I was in the record business. So I’ll play World Waiting For The Sunrise and How High The Moon, maybe Over The Rainbow, some standards. But it depends upon the artist that comes up – if people like a certain kind of music, I will focus the show that way. Whoever walks up on to the stage is the star – he is the picture, we are the frame. The frame is there to make the star look better – let’s make this fellow the best he’s ever going to be.

In order to be honest with myself, I have to reveal more of who I am. This is a part of the improv process.

You can practice to learn technique, but I’m more interested in conceiving something in the moment.

My role in society, or any artist or poet’s role, is to try and express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel. Not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all.

One of the great moments of my life was when I could write musician on my passport.

Music comes from the moment, it is spontaneous, it exists at the time it is created.

Creativity and artistic endeavors have a mission far beyond just making music for the sake of music.

If you already have a piece of music ingrained in your body, why would you not play it?

If I can’t feel it, I don’t want to sing it.