Louis Armstrong

There is two kinds of music, the good, and the bad. I play the good kind.

There are some people that if they don’t know, you can’t tell them.

You blows who you is.

Not too slow, not too fast. Kind of half-fast.

I don’t need words. It’s all in the phrasing.

You will never know what the meaning of Jazz is if ask what it means.

You don’t want to play like B. B. King. You want to be you. So what you do is listen to players you like, and try to “borrow” a little bit from each guy. You don’t try to sound exactly like the other guy, you just add the bits to your vocabulary. It’s like learning to read or write.

Music is interior decoration.

It’s like a whole orchestra, the piano for me.

We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first, rock ‘n’ roll or Christianity.

Just ’cause I’ve forgotten more than I can play, doesn’t mean it’s not Improv.

I consider myself a poet first and a musician second. I live like a poet and I’ll die like a poet.

Jazz is an art form that depends on its antecedents. There must be respect for the people that have gone before.

If you take the time and your talent is real, it will last.

For me, the Les Paul is the greatest rock ‘n’ roll guitar of all time. If you’re not playing a Gibson guitar and you’re playing this kind of music, whether it’s punk, metal or anything grounded in rock ‘n’ roll, you’re not really doing it right. I don’t think professionally I’d every play anything else. Gibson, thank you for making greatest guitars ever.

It’s easy to play any musical instrument, just touch the right key at the right time and the instrument will play itself.

Gershwin was right in his time, at his time. Everybody else was behind.

Jazz is freedom. You think about that.

It bugs me when people try to analyze jazz as an intellectual theorem. It’s not. It’s feeling.

I like the music. I love it and live it in fact, but for me the business part just plain stinks.

There’s nobody plays like me and I don’t play like anybody else.