Cab Calloway

You hear about the Duke Ellingtons, the Jimmie Luncefords, and the Fletcher Hendersons, but people sometimes forget that jazz was not only built in the minds of the great ones, but on the backs of the ordinary ones.

Everybody did something. It was very entertaining. We had a lot of fun. Lot of fun. And there was no segregation, that I could see. I never saw any.

We didn’t have any segregation at the Cotton Club. No. The Cotton Club was wide open, it was free

My audience was my life. What I did and how I did it was all for my audience.

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

Everybody came. Everybody came to the Cotton Club.

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.

It’s easy to play any musical instrument, just touch the right key at the right time and the instrument will play itself.

Inspiration may be a form of superconsciousness, or perhaps of subconsciousness – I wouldn’t know. But I am sure it is the antithesis of self-consciousness.

Change is always happening. That’s one of the wonderful things about Jazz music.

True music must repeat the thought and inspirations of the people and the time. My people are Americans and my time is today.

Improvising musicians are musical travelers, voyagers. There is a freedom to wander the musical landscape.

I don’t want to sing anything that doesn’t come real.

I just think swing is a matter of some good things put together that you can really pat your foot by. I can’t define it beyond that.

The secret is keeping busy, and loving what you do.

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?

It bugs me when people try to analyze jazz as an intellectual theorem. It’s not. It’s feeling.

I think I was supposed to play Jazz.

Don’t worry about playing a lot of notes. Just find one pretty one.

I simply want to reach a level where I will never cease to make progress…so that, even on the bad evenings, I may never be bad enough to despair.

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