Gerry Mulligan

In fact, I heard Bird first, and had got well into listening to him. You know, it’s the kind of accidental thing that awareness of a player is: what’s available, what somebody happens to play for you.

Jazz is a music to be played and not to be intellectualized on.

It’s true I’ve always been attracted to the jazz band in an orchestral way, rather than a band way.

If you’ve only got one horn playing, I still want the sense of ensemble.

Eliminating the piano means that I’ve always worked closer with the bass than most players.

When I began listening to saxophones, I was first attracted to Coleman Hawkins.

If one were asked to name one musician who came closest to composing without human flaw, I suppose general consensus would choose Johann Sebastian Bach.

One thing I like about jazz is that it emphasized doing things differently from what other people were doing.

Play it f**kin’ loud!

I’ve tried all my life to avoid copying. If I can’t be myself, there’s no point being in Jazz.

If you tried to give rock and roll another name, you might call it ‘Chuck Berry’.

I’m famous… ain’t that a bitch?

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

You don’t have to live the blues to play the blues.

I’ll play it first and tell you what it is afterwards.

You don’t want to play like B. B. King. You want to be you. So what you do is listen to players you like, and try to “borrow” a little bit from each guy. You don’t try to sound exactly like the other guy, you just add the bits to your vocabulary. It’s like learning to read or write.

It’s about getting the sound to flow from your body and allowing that sound to get to the piano.

I wanted something very dense, something that would sustain long and more pieces of wood that would be soft, sweet, for more of a mellow sound.

Damn it, when I’m bombastic, I have my reasons. I want to be bombastic: take it or leave it.

When you begin to see the possibilities of music, you desire to do something really good for people.

New artists can own their content and completely build their base and their following without having to sell or be owned by anybody and it creates such a diversity.