Charlie Parker

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

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.

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

You’ve got to learn your instrument.

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’ve got to learn your instrument. Then, you practice, practice, practice. And then, when you finally get up there on the bandstand, forget all that and just wail.

I, of course, wanted to play real jazz. When we played pop tunes, and naturally we had to, I wanted those pops to kick! Not loud and fast, understand, but smoothly and with a definite punch.

I write songs about real things… The subject dictates the mood and it goes from there, really.

Just because a man lacks the use of his eyes doesn’t mean he lacks vision.

Jazz is so incestuous that it’s starting to kill itself.

What kills me is that everybody thinks I like Jazz.

Don’t say Aretha is making a comeback, because I’ve never been away!

I did all you can do with a clarinet. Any more would have been less.

There is a time where you’re beyond yourself, better than your technique, better than your usual ideas.

In a way, I started out to be a baritone player.

I get interested in the various ways that music is being done in the culture, and some of it I like thoroughly enough to want to learn about it. The way I have been successful at doing that is to become part of it.

How can I turn emotion into knowledge? That’s what I try to do with my horn.

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

I’m a musician at heart, I know I’m not really a singer. I couldn’t compete with real singers. But I sing because the public buys it.

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

There’s such a cynicism about the phrase ‘I laughed all the way to the bank.’ It’s as though money is what you’re doing, rather than playing music. If you’re playing a money game, why not get into banking?