Charlie Parker

In Kansas City joints ran 9pm-5am. Pay was a $1.25 a night but somebody special like Count Basie could command $1.50.

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

I realized by using the high notes of the chords as a melodic line, and by the right harmonic progression, I could play what I heard inside me. That’s when I was born.

I kept thinking there’s bound to be something else? I could hear it sometimes, but I couldn’t play it.

The time is now.

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

To this day, no one has come up with a set of rules for originality. There aren’t any.

I like the music. I love it and live it in fact, but for me the business part just plain stinks.

Writing is allowing the musical idea to speak for itself.

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.

It became a kind of a game, to remember the things that had happened five minutes ago. I would start making notes about the things I was doing, on an instrument that was foreign to me, the guitar, so it was just a fun way of doing cognitive therapy. I was none the wiser to it until I began to improve and my ability to speak began to come back.

Trios offer simple instrumentation, but the orchestral possibilities are so profound.

People will always need love, romance, a tender touch and really personal and deeply felt music.

The emotional reaction is all that matters.

Everybody ought to have a lower East Side in their life.

Everything I record, I just try to sound like me and come up with songs that suit what I do and then just go for it. I never know what the public’s going to like, anyway.

A good player can make any instrument sound good.

Jazz never ends… it just continues.

There are four qualities essential to a great Jazzman: taste, courage, individuality and irreverence. These are the qualities I want to retain in my music.

For me, music and life are all about style

People love us when we play what we want to play but we’re starving.