Paul Desmond

I would like to thank my father who discouraged me from playing the violin at an early age.

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

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

I tried practicing for a few weeks and ended up playing too fast.

I think I had it in the back of my mind that I wanted to sound like a dry martini.

I was unfashionable before anyone knew who I was.

As soon as it was understood that we could handle things in our own way, it was the thrill of my life to walk out on that stage with people just hemming the band in.

The weird thing about bass is the simplest stuff to do is the hardest.

I can’t understand these guys who just have to have your autograph. I asked one of them ‘What do you do when you get home, take it out and look at it?’

Bass players are always the intellectual kind, but nobody knows it.

I realized by using the high notes of the chords as a melodic line, and by the right harmonic progression, I could play what I heard inside me. That’s when I was born.

It’s about getting the sound to flow from your body and allowing that sound to get to the piano.

Being a Jazz musician is not a rose garden!

If I can’t feel it, I don’t want to sing it.

I like chords that are very lush with all the lush parts taken out.

Improvisation is the ability to talk to oneself.

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

Your daddy’s rich and your ma is good lookin’ So hush little baby don’t you cry.

You can make a saxophone into an electric organ; you can do everything with it.

I got a chance to listen to and watch Thelonious Monk and his quartet play two shows a night, for six weeks. It was a great education. There was my university, man.

I have no elitist concepts about Jazz. I would not be the musician I am today without experiencing invaluable music styles that are at the roots of African American black life and culture.