Peggy Lee

What are you going to do when you love music? You can’t stop.

Nobody has ever been able to define Jazz satisfactorily. This is probably because anyone who was capable of doing so never really wanted to, knowing how much you would have to leave out of the definition.

I just wonder where I was when the talent was being given out, like George Benson, Kenny Burrell, Eric Clapton… oh, there’s many more! I wouldn’t want to be like them, you understand, but I’d like to be equal, if you will.

Good music is good music and everything else can go to hell.

Jazzmen are our surrogates for the unpredictable, our paladins of constant change.

Jazz means many things to many people, but it’s all about choices.

I play whatever the hell comes out… that’s it.

People always ask, “Why jazz?” and I’m like “Why not?” It’s kind of like asking Seurat, “Why so many dots?” I imagine if you asked Bjork, “Why the Tibetan bells?” She’d probably be like “That’s just what I heard.” It’s the same thing. This is just the way I see music.

The blues tells a story in itself. It can make you happy or give you a feeling to swing.

The value of music is not dazzling yourself and others with technique.

Your ear is the final judge to what sounds right and what sounds wrong.

There’s a way of playing safe, there’s a way of using tricks and there’s the way I like to play which is dangerously where you’re going to take a chance on making mistakes in order to create something you haven’t created before.

All a musician can do is to get closer to the source.

Music is a reservoir… of sounds.

Music can’t save the world, but can make one a little calmer.

It made no sense to ignore them and to continue writing as if they did not exist. I felt that it was worth the effort to see if I couldn’t say what I had to say in the simplest possible terms.