Joe Henderson

I started to like blues, I guess, when I was about 6 or 7 years old. There was something about it, because nobody else played that kind of music.

The hippest thing you can do is not play at all. Just listen.

What have I got? No looks, no money, no education… just talent.

You can play a shoestring if you’re sincere.

I’ve studied all my musical life, but learning is only good if you do something constructive with it.

Music is the tool to express life – and all that makes a difference.

I haven’t a great Jazz band and I don’t want one.

Music should enrich the soul; it should teach spirituality by showing a person a portion of himself that he would not discover otherwise. It’s easy to rediscover part of yourself, but through art you can be shown part of yourself you never knew existed. That’s the real mission of art. The artist has to find something within himself that’s universal and which he can put into terms that are communicable to other people. The magic of it is that art can communicate to a person without his realizing it.

If you already have a piece of music ingrained in your body, why would you not play it?

I have a sense of the importance of music and how powerful it is to bring people together.

Your own music comes out of your head and emotions, but it’s not etched in your system.

First I was working on classical music that didn’t move me at all. I hated it. So I decided to discover the kinds of classical music that did move me—like Chopin, Satie, Beethoven, and certain Mozart songs. Mozart would play a counterpart with his left hand while using his right to mock it. It was blue, dark, shadowy and it made me feel something. That’s when I realized music was inside me.

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.

I am a writer – that is what I am before being a performer or musician. I love waking up in the morning and then going to sleep that night with something that did not exist.

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.