Dizzy Gillespie

I try to teach by example and not force ideas on a young musician. We’re here to be part of a process of exchange.

The sign of a mature musician is knowing what not to play.

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.

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

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.

Man, as long as people want to hear Jazz, I’ll give it to them.

Improvisation is the ability to talk to oneself.

I am an American citizen and feel I am entitled to the same rights as any other citizen.

I’m no good with chords. I’m horrible with chords.

It’s performing without any really set basis for the lines and the content as such emotionally or, specifically, musically. And if you sit down and contemplate what you’re going to do, and take five hours to write five minutes of music, then it’s composed music. Therefore I would put it in the classical or serious, whatever you want to call it, written-music category. So there’s composed music and there’s jazz. And to me anybody that makes music using the process that we are using in Jazz, is playing Jazz.

You want the listener to find the song on their own, give too much away and it takes away from the imagination.

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.

Stop before you’re done.

What I’m doing, I prefer to call that jazz, because it is a beautiful word – I love it.

If you follow your passions, you’ll never work a day in your life.

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.

In Europe they look upon jazz as art. In America it’s a diversion. Somebody opens a restaurant and installs another band off to the side. People don’t listen.

I learned to play guitar on my lying back while I was bed-ridden. I only thought to record the songs because sometimes I would I couldn’t remember what I had just done. Eventually I started singing, because I thought if I sang it that would help to remember even more. But I wasn’t trying to sing. And then one day-this is really weird -I just wrote a song. It came out at a rapid rate and I recorded it and I listened back to it and was like ‘Wow, it’s a tune’.

[Stratocaster vs Les Paul] It’s a totally different animal. One is for very subtle and, I would say, more musical things that you can distract and abuse. You can’t do that with a Les Paul. It’s too delicate. It’s got a very delicate tone; most people don’t ever realize that because they are plugged into monstrous amplifiers which completely, instantaneously covers up the unique sound quality it has. All those years of development go straight out the window when you overload the amp.

Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.