Gerry Mulligan

I’m fascinated with the electronic devices that we can mess around with.

What I came back to is that jazz is a music to be played and not to be intellectualized on.

Miles Davis is one who writes songs when he plays.

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

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

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

Women bring something different to an instrument if they are respectful of their feminine aesthetic.

To play without passion is inexcusable.

Mary Lou Williams used to tell me: If you’re not feeling right, play a minor tune and it falls into place.

You can’t seperate modern jazz from rock or from rhythm and blues – you can’t seperate it. Because that’s where it all started, and that’s where it all come from – that’s where I learned to keep rhythm – in church.

Music and song are, in my opinion, so fine and necessary a part of life that without them we cannot be said really to live at all.

The weird thing about bass is the simplest stuff to do is the hardest.

Even if people don’t understand the language that you’re singing in, they still know good music when they hear it.

The only award I’ve ever worked for or wanted really were the ones that were given to me by the fans. So, whether it’s a platinum record or hit songs, those are the ones that last the most.

The word “jazz” means to me no category, but when you get stuck into wanting to do something the way it was with the “jazz emblem” or logo chained around your neck, you play in a frozen moment in time and you keep fermenting the ‘fifties saying jazz should be this way or that. Well, if jazz to me means no category, then I’ve got the green light And if it sounds like.. sounds like.. sounds like, and keeps crossing over, it’s what I wanted to do in the first place. I like the way Stravinsky and those guys did things. They expressed something, if not themselves. In fact, some people talk about expression, but expression really doesn’t mean anything to me because there’s a lot of work which goes into building a drama and then it’s up to other people to offer “expression.” Expression is such a nebulous thing.

Jazz is letting everybody do his or her thing with the music.

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.

You can have the greatest player in terms of mastering an instrument and be yawning your head off.

We usually never got out of there before four or five o’clock in the morning. Every morning. So it was rough.

Jazz is a beautiful word. I love it.

When rock came in, people didn’t know what to do. Even Sinatra, he didn’t know what to do. The music was changing. And it’s changing now.