Artie Shaw

An artist should write for himself and not for an audience. If the audience likes it, great. If not, they can keep away.

There’s such a cynicism about the phrase ‘I laughed all the way to the bank.’ It’s as though money is what you’re doing, rather than playing music. If you’re playing a money game, why not get into banking?

I can’t understand guys who just have to have your autograph. What do you do when you get home, take it out and look at it?

An entertainer pleases others while an artist only has to please himself.

‘Swing’ is an adjective or a verb, not a noun. All jazz musicians should swing. There is no such thing as a ‘swing band’ in music.

I can’t understand these guys who just have to have your autograph. I asked one of them ‘What do you do when you get home, take it out and look at it?’

I am not interested in compromising my music to make it palatable to an assumed sub-standard mass.

It’s all music.

Jazz is about being in the moment.

Art should teach spirituality by showing a person a portion of himself that he would not discover otherwise.

What have I got? No looks, no money, no education… just talent.

A Jazz man should be saying what he feels: humor, sadness, joy… all the things that humans have.

I’m not thinking about what needs to be on the radio. I’m not thinking about anything other than – I’m just going to let this music come out of me and not have any sort of preconceived notion of what I should do. I’m just going to do it.

Well, for me it’s – music is the instrument of life.

Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.

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

I gave it my absolute everything I had in that howl at the start of the song. And then B. B. King opened up his mouth and I felt like a girl. We had learned and absorbed, but the more we tried to be like B.B., the less convincing we were.

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

To me, the guitar cuts through. It carries more than the organ, but the organ has got more guts.

Music and song are, in my opinion, so fine and necessary a part of life that without them we cannot be said really to live at all.

Sound is the first thing that we tune into.