Dizzy Gillespie

They’re not particular whether you’re playing a flat 5th or a ruptured 129th as long as they can dance.

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.

Men have died for this music. You can’t get more serious than that.

They’re not particular about whether you’re playing a flatted fifth or a ruptured 129th as long as they can dance to it.

It’s taken me all my life to learn what not to play.

I always try to teach by example and not force my ideas on a young musician. One of the reasons we’re here is to be a part of this process of exchange.

It pulled me like a magnet, jazz did, because it was a way that I could express myself.

Listening is more important than anything because that’s what music is. Somebody is playing something and you’re receiving it.

Check out the albums, … Check out the live performances. That’s the reality of it all. Music is such an energizing thing.

When I sing, I play in my mind; the minute I stop singing orally, I start to sing by playing Lucille.

I met up with George Shearing about a year before my mother passed away. When I was 11 years old, Mama took me to the Edgewater Inn in Seattle and I was able to sit down and play piano for George and a lot of (the set list) was songs I had heard from the album, ‘Concerto For My Love.’ Then, after Mama died, my dad and I went to actually hear him perform at the Edgewater Inn when I was 12. Oh my gosh! It just really got me into playing piano.

People who like Jazz feel the depth and soul and intelligence that the music expresses.

I cannot play a lie. I have to believe in what I play or it won’t come out.

A guy is influenced by hundreds of people and things, and all show up in his work. To fasten on any one or two is ridiculous. I will say one thing, though. Lennie Tristano’s early records impressed me tremendously. Tunes like ‘Tautology,’ ‘Marshmallow,’ and ‘Fishin’ Around.’ I heard the fellows in his group building their lines with a design and general structure that was different from anything I’d ever heard in jazz.

Jazz has the ability to absorb and transform influences from diverse musical styles.

Inspiration grows into full-scale creation through persistence and imagination.

Music should strike fire from the heart of man and bring tears to the eyes of woman.

There’s a category for me. I like to be referred to as a good singer of good songs in good taste.

I used my mother’s radio as a PA system. I’d take the telephone, the speaking part, and take those two leads off and lead them into the radio and the sound would come out of the speaker.

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

I gave it my absolute everything I had in that howl at the start of the song. And then B. B. King opened up his mouth and I felt like a girl. We had learned and absorbed, but the more we tried to be like B.B., the less convincing we were.