Gerry Mulligan

I like what I hear other guys doing, but the thing that really attracts me is melodic playing.

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

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

You can make a saxophone into an electric organ; you can do everything with it.

Only the French, I guess, really use tenor and alto to any great extent in the orchestra.

In a way, I started out to be a baritone player.

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

I don’t have to lay on the couch and see a therapist because my therapy is in art.

Don’t threaten me with love, baby. Let’s just go walking in the rain.

Trying to play the new concept with a outward bound feeling.

Everybody came. Everybody came to the Cotton Club.

I, of course, wanted to play real jazz. When we played pop tunes, and naturally we had to, I wanted those pops to kick! Not loud and fast, understand, but smoothly and with a definite punch.

The audience, they’re not professionals. They just love music. It isn’t necessary to play over their heads to be admired.

You can’t copy anybody and end up with anything. If you copy, you’re working without any real feeling.

I never thought about being famous or rich. I just thought, Oh, I’ll get a nice little girl and go and play every night, and I’d be happy. And that worked for a while. But the little girl’s mother didn’t trust a guy with a horn.

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

Django Reinhardt was fantastic. he must have been playing all the time to be that good.

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

As long as musicians have passion for spontaneity and creating something that’s never been before, Jazz will flourish.

I’ve never recorded anything I didn’t like.

Jazz musician is a combination entertainer, poet, singer, educator, student, artist, seducer and all-round good fellow.