Gerry Mulligan

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of someone else.

I got out of the car and there was a knife in my neck. The guy says, “Don’t move.” And the drummer got out of the car, and he got a gun in his head. This was my entrance to the South Side of Chicago. But it was necessary, because I wanted to play jazz.

He knows I rip him off every day. He’s the godfather for me. Nobody can say they aren’t influenced by what Stevie Wonder has done.

What I look for in concert is a connection with the audience.

People sometimes say it takes a long time to become a Jazz fan, but for me it took about five seconds.

When you just get mixed up and there’s too much going on, then it’s time to pick up your guitar.

Any particular style of playing which represents an authentic way of musical feeling is genuine expression.

Jazz is a feeling more than anything else.

I’m believe that all people are in possession of what might be called a ‘universal musical mind.’

I don’t intend to be a performing flea anymore. I was the dreamweaver, but although I’ll be around I don’t intend to be running at 20,000 miles an hour trying to prove myself. I don’t want to die at 40.

I’ve noticed that the more adventurous and in that mode that I am, it seems that the more the audience really likes it.

You don’t know what love is, until you’ve learned the meaning of the blues, until you’ve loved a love you’ve had to lose.

If you can’t play the blues, you might as well hang it up.

Men have died for this music. You can’t get more serious than that.

I didn’t need to worry about keys, chords, melody if I had that emotion that brought tears and laughter to people’s hearts.