D C DowDell

You don’t chose your inspirations, they chose you.

Jazz music has always made powerful statements about freedom, creativity and personal identity.

Jazz has evolved with an inner necessity characteristic of any true art form.

10% of musicians make 90% of the money, while the remaining 90% of musicians make the 10% that’s left.

Play the music not the instrument.

Spontaneously composed music is a counterpoint that has its own rules based on a natural order and intuitive logic.

If there is no dance, there is not music.

If you want to be a musician, study your craft. Study music.

You have to understand the styles and it’s good to study those that came before us.

The deeper you get into the music allows the ability to appreciate art and all other forms of expression.

For me, the Les Paul is the greatest rock ‘n’ roll guitar of all time. If you’re not playing a Gibson guitar and you’re playing this kind of music, whether it’s punk, metal or anything grounded in rock ‘n’ roll, you’re not really doing it right. I don’t think professionally I’d every play anything else. Gibson, thank you for making greatest guitars ever.

I’ve never known a musician who regretted being one. Whatever deceptions life may have in store for you, music itself is not going to let you down.

I think the idea is now for blacks to write about the history of our music. It’s time for that, because whites have been doing it all the time. It’s time for us to do it ourselves and tell it like it is.

Forget about upholding the tradition and just play who you really are.

Music should always be an adventure.

If you can’t get your songs to people one way, you have to find another.

The most important thing I look for in a musician is whether he knows how to listen.

Most people use music as a couch; they want to be pillowed on it, relaxed and consoled for the stress of daily living. But serious music was never meant to be soporific.

I do Jazz, Blues, Country and so forth. I do them all like a good utility man.

Pop doesn’t really look back. It can’t. What makes pop work is simplicity.

The problem is that a lot of the blues stations are late on Saturday night, and like a lot of people, I ain’t no vampire!