Pete Fountain

People complain about the music industry, but this is a great time to be a musician.

Talent is only the starting point.

We open our minds, stretch forth, take chances and venture out musically to arrive at something new and different.

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.

If you don’t make mistakes, you aren’t really trying.

When I achieved what I thought the musicians were trying to do, the sound sort of bloomed. When it’s right, everything is beautiful.

Jazz musician is a combination entertainer, poet, singer, educator, student, artist, seducer and all-round good fellow.

I never wanted to be like other blues singers. I might like hearing them play, but I’ve never wanted to be anyone other than myself. There are a few people that I’ve wished I could play like, but when I tried, it didn’t work.

Genius is a word too often tossed around in musical circles.

Count don’t do nothin’. But it sure sounds good.

What we play is life.

Play it f**kin’ loud!

Jazz music has got to have that thing. You have to be born with it. You can’t even buy it. If you could buy it, they’d have it at the next Newport festival.

We’re more popular than Jesus Christ now. I don’t know which will go first; rock and roll or Christianity.

Jazz music today is from the head and not the heart.