Benny Green

A Jazz musician is a juggler who uses harmonies instead of oranges.

Jazz music is a special skill that has brought pleasure to millions throughout the world.

In my family on my mother’s side we’re all church musicians first so I don’t remember a time when we weren’t doing something musical. My brothers and I sang in a little quartet, my aunts and uncles sang and my grandfather was a minister of music in our church, so walking and talking was like doing music for us.

I don’t worry too much about the fundamentalist principles that are in almost any discussion about Jazz.

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

We may not be changing the world dramatically, but we’re improving it one note at a time.

I always liked the steel guitar. I also love the guys that play the bottleneck. But I could never do it; I never made it do what I want. So every time I would pick up the guitar, I’d shake my hand and trill it a bit. For some strange reason my ears would say to me that sounds similar to what those guys were doing. I can’t pick up the guitar now without doing it. So that’s how I got into making my sound. It was nothing pretty. Just trying to please myself. I heard that sound.

Stevie didn’t use the technology to drive the song. He used it to enhance. I use the tools to further my work, I don’t use my work to further the tools.

I’m now a legend, whether I want to be or not.

It’s up to the individual to keep up with the times.

I kinda went back to that period between ’88 and ’94 where I felt like I was the most creative, without being hindered by powers that be. I was no longer going to try to hinder myself to what I thought was going to be on the radio.

Without jazz, life would be a mistake.

Everybody that you could name would join in our audiences from, Laguardia on down. Everybody came. Everybody came to the Cotton Club.

I am an improviser, I improvise music. Whatever you want to call it, it’s all improvised music. I may capture it and go back and write it down for others, but it was originally improvised.

Surrender your whole being to a note and gravity disappears.

The blues comes right back to a person’s feelings, to his daily activities in life. But rich people don’t know nothing about the blues, please believe me.

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