Mike Zwerin

I think music needs to be of its time and speak to that time.

There are no natural barriers. It’s all music.

In Kansas City joints ran 9pm-5am. Pay was a $1.25 a night but somebody special like Count Basie could command $1.50.

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

I started out to become a jazz pianist; in the meantime I started singing and I sang the way I felt and that’s just the way it came out.

Last time I saw Count Basie, he was in a wheelchair. They wheeled him up onto the stage, he sits down at the piano, and he gives the downbeat, and that band played like they were in heaven. And right in the middle, the band cuts. He had to take one hand and put the other on it, and he comes down with one note. And it was the greatest note I ever heard in my life.

For me, there wasn’t a line between working and getting paid or simply playing for fun.

Jazz is not something that can be defined through blunt instruments. It is much more poetic than that.

If you want to be a musician, study your craft. Study music.

Jazz is not just music, it’s a way of life, it’s a way of being, a way of thinking… The new inventive phrases we make up to describe things – all that to me is jazz just as much as the music we play.

If you find a note tonight that sounds good, play the same damn note every night!

I’ve always liked the Freddie King/B. B. King rich tone, and at the same time, I like the manic Buddy Guy/Otis Rush Strat tone. So I’m always caught in the middle of the Gibson and Fender sounds. If I’m playing my black [Fender] Strat, and I’m in the middle of a blues, I kind of wish I was playing a [Gibson] Les Paul. Then again, if I was playing a Les Paul, the sound would be great, but I’d be saying, “Man, I wish I had the Stratocaster neck!”

Composers tend to assume that everyone loves music. Surprisingly enough, everyone doesn’t.

If I don’t learn something new every day, it’s a day lost

Jazz affirms the noblest aspirations of character, individual discipline, perseverance and innovation.