Nat King Cole

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.

I am famous because I am an African American jazz artist.

I may be helping to bring harmony between people through my music.

I’m an interpreter of stories. When I perform it’s like sitting down at my piano and telling fairy stories.

I am an American citizen and feel I am entitled to the same rights as any other citizen.

I’m not playing for other musicians. We’re trying to reach the guy who works all day and wants to spend a buck at night. We’ll keep him happy.

To get the music the way you want it, there’s a lot of work involved.

Practicing is like getting your vocabulary together to use on the gig.

Music’s been around a long time, and there’s going to be music long after Ray Charles is dead. I just want to make my mark, leave something musically good behind. If it’s a big record, that’s the frosting on the cake, but music’s the main meal.

There are a million good tunes.

I’m creating music – it doesn’t matter if anyone else likes it.

You can cage the singer but not the song.

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

I always make it a point to pick songs on which players really shine.

Finally Beiderbecke took out a silver cornet. He put it to his lips and blew a phrase. The sound came out like a girl saying ‘yes.’

Inspiration may be a form of super-consciousness, or perhaps of subconsciousness—I wouldn’t know. But I am sure it is the antithesis of self-consciousness.

In my family on my mother’s side we’re all church musicians first so I don’t remember a time when we weren’t doing something musical. My brothers and I sang in a little quartet, my aunts and uncles sang and my grandfather was a minister of music in our church, so walking and talking was like doing music for us.

The extreme dynamic and percussive possibilities of an acoustic guitar amplified through a bridge pickup have, over many years of performing, informed not only the way I play, but the way I write and sing too. My guitar taught me to sing in textures, from the roundest lingering harmonic to the sharpest snap of a pulled string. Being a percussion instrument as well as a melodic instrument, my guitar also teaches me about the relationship between rhythm and melody. Portable. Did I mention it also taught me about being portable?

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

Music is an extraordinary vehicle for expressing very powerful emotions. That’s what draws people towards it.

If you think it, want it, dream it… then it’s real. You are what you feel.