Les Paul

When I got my first guitar my fingers wouldn’t go to the sixth string so I took off the big E and played with just five strings. I was only 6 or 7.

No, working is what will keep you alive.

I think the most important thing about playing is to walk out with confidence, look the people right in the eye and say ‘Here I am,’ and go and do your thing. As soon as they know you’re confident, they’re confident. As long as you adjust to them you’re not in trouble. You should eyeball them, find out what they want, and give it to them. They didn’t pay to come out and look at the tapestries.

I was walking down the street, and I saw a sewer digger on his lunch hour open his lunch pail, dig out a harmonica, knock out the cracker crumbs, and play a bunch of tunes on it. I was fascinated by that harmonica, so I stared the guy out of it. I just stared at him. He said, ‘Here, kid, take it. Get out of here.’

I have younger friends who don’t work and they aren’t doing so well. My secret is to keep going, keep working.

Paint pictures with sound. First, find your white-the deepest, roundest sound you can play on the guitar. Then, find your black-which is the most extreme tonal difference from white you can play. Now, just pick the note where you’ve got white, pick it where you’ve got black, and then find all those colors in between. Get those colors down, and you’ll be able to express almost any emotion on the guitar.?

If there is no dance, there is not music.

If you want to make beautiful music, you must play the black and the white notes together.

Every symphony, for example, is a sonata for orchestra; every string quartet is a sonata for four strings; every concerto a sonata for a solo instrument and orchestra.

It’s not jazz as we know jazz here in America.

Jazz is a work in progress. We’ll be defining traditions in Jazz for 200-300 years.

Ahhh – those Jazz guys are just makin’ that stuff up!

If I’m going to sing like someone else, then I don’t need to sing at all

A drummer has to be kind-hearted.

I don’t pop my cork for every man I see.

All the music that was ever heard came from the inner silence in every musician.

Why Jazz? This is just the way I see music.

Composers tend to assume that everyone loves music. Surprisingly enough, everyone doesn’t.

I never believed in a set routine. It should depend on how you feel, because you play what you feel.

I hear beauty and elegance combined with passion and fire.

The minute I stop singing orally, I start to sing by playing Lucille.