Paul Kreibich

Apparently Jazz is now considered high art and the average person has trouble understanding it.

Jazz music is our original American culture.

People who like Jazz feel the depth and soul and intelligence that the music expresses.

There’s a spiritual satisfaction that one gets from listening and playing good Jazz.

Jazz is not to be sliced into bites by mass marketing geniuses who assume we are mindless cattle.

Jazz standards are our contribution to music history.

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

The first time I ever had to go overseas for music was to play the Royal Festival Hall in London, singing in a tribute to Ella Fitzgerald, and that week was insane: Thursday I rehearse with the orchestra; Friday I sing two songs in front of 2,500 people, which I have never done before; and the next day I go to Abbey Road to record with Herbie Hancock; and then I am playing a pub in south London somewhere, and nobody cares because London have lost some sporting match; and then I go home and I’m standing in front of my washing machine, putting my unmentionables into the dryer, and in that instant, I just looked at myself and said ‘This life is going to be strange’.

Jazz is the only music in which the same note can be played night after night but differently each time.

I don’t have a favorite song that I’ve written. But I do have a favorite song: ‘Always on My Mind,’ the Willie Nelson version. If I could sing it like he do, I would sing it every night. I like the story it tells.

People who like Jazz feel the depth and soul and intelligence that the music expresses.

I think when my brother (Claude who founded vocal sextet Take Six) got his deal and I saw him on the Grammys that was when I said, ‘oh, you know what? If he can do it then maybe I can do too’ and that’s when I really focused on trying to make it in this business.

External instruments are only extensions of the biological instrument.

Know the business; you need to know the business side of things.

I’ve never known a musician who regretted being one. Whatever deceptions life may have in store for you, music itself is not going to let you down.

Jazz is like wine. When it is new it’s only for the experts, but when it gets older everybody wants it.

Jazz attracted me because in it I found a formal perfection and instrumental precision I admire in classical music, but which popular music doesn’t have.

I worked until I could play and do changes at any tempo in any key and said ‘What else is there?’ Now I’m finding out.

Songwriting is about getting the demon out of me. It’s like being possessed. You try to go to sleep, but the song won’t let you. So you have to get up and make it into something, and then you’re allowed to sleep. It’s always in the middle of the night, or you’re half-awake or tired, when your critical faculties are switched off. So letting go is what the whole game is. Every time you try to put your finger on it, it slips away. You turn on the lights and the cockroaches run away. You can never grasp them…

What I look for in concert is a connection with the audience.

People all over the world have problems. And as long as people have problems, the blues can never die.