Jazz stands for freedom.
My dream was to have a steady job, was not to be on the road, to exist like a guy that goes to work as a mechanic or a carpenter and knows he’s gonna have a job.
And there is a time where you can be beyond yourself. You can be better than your technique. You can be better than most of your usual ideas. And this is a whole other category that you can get into.
Don’t be a perfectionist… leave that to the classical musicians.
I prefer no one to teach me. I prefer to swing on my own.
No person in their right mind would want to put their family through what I’ve had to put my family through.
There’s a way of playing safe and then there’s where you create something you haven’t created before.
They said Bird played bebop, but Bird could still swing. I’ve heard a lot of guys play bebop, but they wasn’t swinging.
Using drugs didn’t help me play, all it did was hang me up for 15 years.
I saw a vibraphone for the first time and knew immediately I had found my means of expression.
It isn’t where you came from, its where you’re going that counts.
Get around, be on the scene, play it clean, be seen, be keen and be over eighteen.
Somebody asked me once, Do you think that swing will ever come back? And I said, Do you think the 1938 Form will ever come back?
The way I feel today, as long as my health is good and I can handle myself well and people still come to my concerts, still buy my CDs, I’ll keep playing until I feel like I can’t.
You know why I quit playing ballads? Cause I love playing ballads.
We didn’t have any segregation at the Cotton Club. No. The Cotton Club was wide open, it was free
I played in rhumba bands, mickey mouse bands; all kinds of bands.
What don’t I want to learn? I have how-to books, history, nature. Ain’t nobody here saying, ‘You’d better learn this.’ But I still think I’ve got a head on my shoulders, and it pleases me.
A great teacher stimulates his student’s creativity enough so that they go out and find the answers themselves.
I saw music as a way to entertain people and take them away from their daily lives and put smiles on their faces, as opposed to what I see it being now, which is a way for me to actually communicate, and a way for me to tap into my subconscious.
Jazz is the false liquidation of art, instead of utopia becoming reality it disappears from the picture.
Once you become predictable, no one’s interested anymore.
