Les Paul

You can’t go to the store and buy a good ear and rhythm.

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.

There’s millions and millions of people who think Les Paul is a guitar!

Of the whole bunch of guys who play hollow body guitar, I think Herb Ellis has the most drive.

I used my mother’s radio as a PA system. I’d take the telephone, the speaking part, and take those two leads off and lead them into the radio and the sound would come out of the speaker.

Paint pictures with sound. First, find your white-the deepest, roundest sound you can play on the guitar. Then, find your black-which is the most extreme tonal difference from white you can play. Now, just pick the note where you’ve got white, pick it where you’ve got black, and then find all those colors in between. Get those colors down, and you’ll be able to express almost any emotion on the guitar.?

Playing gives me as much good feeling now as it did when I was a bitty kid.

Jazz is a beautiful word. I love it.

And then when I found my sound, it took me two and a half weeks to find my sound and when I did I pulled out all the stops, all the stops I could find.

He’s not a performer, he’s not a composer, he’s not even a musician, but Norman Granz is Mr. Jazz.

I would like you to know, I am a doctor of music.

I am inclined to just write music and not worry about what people can or can’t do.

After you’ve done all the work and prepared as much as you can, what the hell, you might as well go out and have a good time.

I got a chance to listen to and watch Thelonious Monk and his quartet play two shows a night, for six weeks. It was a great education. There was my university, man.

Do not fear mistakes, there are none.

Music can’t save the world, but can make one a little calmer.

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

I learned to play guitar on my lying back while I was bed-ridden. I only thought to record the songs because sometimes I would I couldn’t remember what I had just done. Eventually I started singing, because I thought if I sang it that would help to remember even more. But I wasn’t trying to sing. And then one day-this is really weird -I just wrote a song. It came out at a rapid rate and I recorded it and I listened back to it and was like ‘Wow, it’s a tune’.

People always ask, “Why jazz?” and I’m like “Why not?” It’s kind of like asking Seurat, “Why so many dots?” I imagine if you asked Bjork, “Why the Tibetan bells?” She’d probably be like “That’s just what I heard.” It’s the same thing. This is just the way I see music.

And ultimately the people who produce my records, they know that they’re here to serve the purpose of me expressing who I am at this period of time and augmenting that or pulling it forward and I love that process.

If you follow your passions, you’ll never work a day in your life.