Jimmy Smith

Three months. I was playing the organ for three months. It was a challenge for me in the beginning.

I heard Mr. Wild Bill Davis. I heard him play in 1930 and he told me that it would take me fifteen years just to learn the pedals, the pedals of the organ and I got mad.

Ninety-five percent of my audience was white.

Everybody has somebody that they patterned themselves after.

People like the idea of the trio and so I did mostly trio.

Choosing people to be on your ‘Sammy Hagar and Friends’ record, you’re going, ‘I’ve got so many friends.’ And so many friends have called me up and said, ‘Come on dude, why didn’t you ask me to be on the record?’ I’m going, ‘Damn, I forgot.’ I really did.

I’m always interested in looking forward toward the future. Carving out new ways of looking at things.

It became a kind of a game, to remember the things that had happened five minutes ago. I would start making notes about the things I was doing, on an instrument that was foreign to me, the guitar, so it was just a fun way of doing cognitive therapy. I was none the wiser to it until I began to improve and my ability to speak began to come back.

Your ear is the final judge to what sounds right and what sounds wrong.

While many attempts have been made to define Jazz, what’s the point really. Jazz is to be experienced – period.

Music must be an innovation.

You have to understand the styles and it’s good to study those that came before us.

The real innovators did their innovating by just being themselves.

Our music artistry should not be disconnected from our lives or ourselves.

[on Ornette Coleman] Man, that cat is nuts!

Musicians have to suffer to a certain degree in order to obtain their outlet.

If you can’t get your songs to people one way, you have to find another.

But the guitar, my lady, whether well played or badly played, well strung or badly strung, is pleasant to hear and listen to; being so easy to learn, it attracts the busiest of talented people and makes them put aside loftier occupations so that they may hold a guitar in their hands.

Jazz is not just music, it’s a way of life, it’s a way of being, a way of thinking.

Music allows the great opportunity to play with people you love.

There’s a spiritual satisfaction that one gets from listening and playing good Jazz.