Charlie Parker

The time is now.

They teach you there’s a boundary line to music. But, man, there’s no boundary line to art.

Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn. They teach you there’s a boundary line to music. But, man, there’s no boundary line to art.

Master your instrument, master the music and then forget all that and just play.

It’s not all smoke and mirrors. Some of it comes from books.

Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn. They teach you there’s a boundary line to music. But, man, there’s no boundary line to art.

You just sort of have to play the way you are.

Music is like wine, the less you know about it the sweeter you like it. 

I don’t do something because I think it will sell 30 million albums. I couldn’t care less. If it sells one, it sells one.

The beauty of Jazz is that it’s malleable. People address it to suit their own personalities.

I don’t know anything about music. In my line you don’t have to.

We go in there and we work on altering those ideas and in many cases go in different directions.

I’m more careful about my hands than about what I eat and most anything else, because my hands have been my living. My hands have been able to help me learn. My hands have taken me around the world. So I’m very proud of my hands.

Kinship doesn’t come from skin color. It’s in your soul and your mind.

With the birth of the first artist, came the inevitable afterbirth… the first critic

Music is emotional, and you may catch a musician in a very unemotional mood or you may not be in the same frame of mind as the musician. So a critic will often say a musician is slipping.

So What or Kind of Blue were done in that era, the right hour, the right day. It’s over; it’s on the record.

Jazz music has always been a place where anything is possible.

A lot of singers think all they have to do is exercise their tonsils to get ahead. They refuse to look for new ideas and new outlets, so they fall by the wayside… I’m going to try to find out the new ideas before the others do.

Vocalists must study music and know everything an instrumentalist needs to know.

Jazz is not gonna be a dinosaur and stay around in one form.