Milt Jackson

Jazz isn’t a what, it’s a how.

It’s spontaneity that has always characterized Jazz music’s finest improvisers.

Sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself.

If it wasn’t for hustlers, gangsters and gamblers there’d be no Jazz. Wasn’t middle-class who said Let’s go hear Bird tonight.

The people who know nothing about music are the ones always talking about it.

If you tried to give rock and roll another name, you might call it ‘Chuck Berry’.

It’s not jazz as we know jazz here in America.

It’s not uncomfortable for me to be a sideman, but I feel more comfortable as a bandleader.

When you begin to see the possibilities of music, you desire to do something really good for people.

At times as a performer they segregated us in some of theatres.

Play for the spiritual aspect, the emotion.

Don’t play what’s there, play what’s not there.

I kept thinking there’s bound to be something else? I could hear it sometimes, but I couldn’t play it.

Music comes from the moment, it is spontaneous, it exists at the time it is created.

If a guy’s got it, let him give it. I’m selling music, not prejudice.