Max Roach

The people who really got me off were dealing with the musical potential of their instrument.

Jazz music grabs you to the point where it never lets you go until the very last breath.

Jazz music is collective creativity.

Jazz is a democratic musical form. We take our respective instruments and collectively create a thing of beauty.

Monk encouraged me to emancipate the drums from their subservient role as timekeepers.

I have won several prizes as the world’s slowest alto player and a special award in 1961 for quietness.

I listen to all kinds of songs. There’s something to be learned from every type of music and from the one making it, whether it’s pop or jazz or hip-hop.

First of all, I never strive for identity. That’s something that just has happened automatically as a result, I think, of just putting things together, tearing things apart and putting it together my own way, and somehow I guess the individual comes through eventually.

By and large Jazz has always been like the kind of a man you wouldn’t want your daughter to associate with.

Live music is best! Make plans to get out and support your local Jazz scene.

They said Bird played bebop, but Bird could still swing. I’ve heard a lot of guys play bebop, but they wasn’t swinging.

There’s a way of playing safe, there’s a way of using tricks and there’s the way I like to play which is dangerously where you’re going to take a chance on making mistakes in order to create something you haven’t created before.

They told me to play what I felt. Hey, I’m a Jazz musician, that’s what I do.

I don’t know where Jazz is going. Maybe it’s going to hell. You can’t make anything go anywhere. It just happens.

That’s the thing about jazz: it’s free flowing, it comes from your soul.

There is a time where you’re beyond yourself, better than your technique, better than your usual ideas.

People will always need love, romance, a tender touch and really personal and deeply felt music.

I love songs that are very autobiographical.

Once we’re inside a tune, we can do anything with it.

Count don’t do nothin’. But it sure sounds good.