Bill Charlap

Gershwin was right in his time, at his time. Everybody else was behind.

I didn’t need to worry about keys, chords, melody if I had that emotion that brought tears and laughter to people’s hearts.

Sometimes when you start losing detail, whether it’s in music or in life, something as small as failing to be polite, you start to lose substance.

I look for a deep, gutty feelin’ in a guitar tone. I don’t use picks. People ask, “How you get that?” It’s just there. There’s a lot of people try to play real fast chords-da da da da da-that ain’t the hard, solid blues. It’s synthetic. It has not feeling to it. You sit down and play some funky, funky guitar. Take your time! Don’t rush it. Just let it come flowing through you. I can play guitar so funky, it’ll bring teardrops to your eyes.

I’ve noticed that the more adventurous and in that mode that I am, it seems that the more the audience really likes it.

Sometimes I sound like gravel and sometimes I sound like coffee and cream.

I’m on some singer’s record date for a demo and I get a note to call Miles Davis. Of course, I didn’t believe it, but I wasn’t going to take a chance by not calling, and it was Miles. He said, ‘I’ve got a session in an hour over at Columbia, can you make it’

Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life.

I’ve sung a lot of emotional songs, but when you’re writing it’s very difficult to decide what to reveal.

It made no sense to ignore them and to continue writing as if they did not exist. I felt that it was worth the effort to see if I couldn’t say what I had to say in the simplest possible terms.

It is people’s hearts that move the age.

I sing to the realists; people who accept it like it is.

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.

I remember Elvis as a young man hanging around the Sun Studios. Even then, I knew this kid had a tremendous talent. He was a dynamic young boy. His phraseology, his way of looking at a song, was as unique as Sinatra’s. I was a tremendous fan, and had Elvis lived, there would have been no end to his inventiveness.

If jazz has to be termed as a wave, then music is a sea, but if the reflectors in the water is the chord.

Start well and end well. The middle will look after itself.