Gerry Mulligan

Life on the road is murder. It’s as though life begins and ends with your horn in your mouth.

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

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.

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

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

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

Jazz has an aesthetic intimacy, a romantic transference.

Jazz is a democratic musical form. We take our respective instruments and collectively create a thing of beauty.

Music happens to be an art form that transcends language.

The radio makes hideous sounds.

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

I am not interested in compromising my music to make it palatable to an assumed sub-standard mass.

When Jazz broke through in England, I remember sneaking to listen on the radio much to my parent’s disapproval.

Sometimes I just think that there are more things to be said to make the audience understand what I’m trying to do more. When I’m singing, I don’t want you to just hear the melody. I want you to relive the story, because most of the songs have pretty good storytelling.

I sing to the realists; people who accept it like it is.

I think the most important thing about playing is to walk out with confidence, look the people right in the eye and say ‘Here I am,’ and go and do your thing. As soon as they know you’re confident, they’re confident. As long as you adjust to them you’re not in trouble. You should eyeball them, find out what they want, and give it to them. They didn’t pay to come out and look at the tapestries.

You have to practice improvisation, let no one kid you about it!

Jazz is the only music in which the same note can be played night after night but differently each time.

Jazz to me is a living music. It’s a music that since its beginning has expressed the feelings, the dreams, hopes, of the people.

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

What don’t I want to learn? I have how-to books, history, nature. Ain’t nobody here saying, ‘You’d better learn this.’ But I still think I’ve got a head on my shoulders, and it pleases me.