Lionel Hampton

I worked hard learning harmony and theory when I was growing up in Chicago in the 1920s.

The secret is keeping busy, and loving what you do.

Music was our wife and we loved her. We stayed with her, clothed her and put diamond rings on her hands.

Working with Benny was important for me and for black musicians in general.

I think I love it more as I get older because I keep getting better on drums, vibes and piano.

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

My life is music, and in some vague, mysterious and subconscious way, I have always been driven by a taut inner spring which has propelled me to almost compulsively reach for perfection in music, often -in fact, mostly -at the expense of everything else in my life.

I still do what I love, and I don’t really think about it. I try to make a beautiful show, so people go home happy. That’s my biggest aspiration: to make people happy.

I would sit on the street corners in my hometown of Indianola, Mississippi, and I would play. And, generally, I would start playing gospel songs. People would come by on the street – you live in Time Square, you know how they do it – they would bunch up. And they would always compliment me on gospel tunes, but they would tip me when I played blues.

If my own work had more importance than any others, it’s because the piano is the key instrument in music.

Master your instrument, master the music and then forget all that and just play.

Check out the albums, … Check out the live performances. That’s the reality of it all. Music is such an energizing thing.

Too many young musicians today want to win polls before they learn their instruments.

They’re not particular about whether you’re playing a flatted fifth or a ruptured 129th as long as they can dance to it.

I think you can play anything you wanna as long as you take the audience along with you.

The memory of things gone is important to a jazz musician. Things like old folks singing in the moonlight in the back yard on a hot night or something said long ago.

Ideologies separate us. Art brings us together.

If you want to make beautiful music, you must play the black and the white notes together.

Jazz – it takes passion to make it happen!

I started playing piano when I was 6. And I knew that wanted to be involved in that form of expression, whether it was through music, or acting, or dancing, or painting, or writing.

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.