Charlie Parker

You’ve got to learn your instrument.

I am a devout musician.

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.

Don’t play the saxophone. Let it play you.

Music is your experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn.

Once I could play what I heard inside me, that’s when I was born.

If I have to go around telling everyone how great I am, then there’s something wrong with my act.

The true value of this music lies in an artist’s individual creativity and that unique process of expression which is Jazz.

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.

My style is to just play. The more “live” you capture your music-the more unthought-out-the more magical it is.

If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn.

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.

Trying to play the new concept with a outward bound feeling.

Bass players are always the intellectual kind, but nobody knows it.

Mozart tapped the source from which all music flows, expressing himself with a spontaneity and refinement and breathtaking rightness.

To me, the guitar cuts through. It carries more than the organ, but the organ has got more guts.

I always wanted to play the piano, and jazz appealed to me.

I love to hear the note sing.

Whenever I fill out the job description I put ‘songwriter’, never ‘singer’ or ‘artist.’ Singers come and go.

One shouldn’t be in the habit of quoting oneself.

Sometimes there are no gigs, but the main thing is still the music.