Ronnie Scott

I decided that I would be one of the biggest new names; and I actually had some little fancy business cards printed up to announce it, ‘Count Basie. Beware, the Count is Here.

Your horn is your passport to the world.

Jazz has the ability to absorb and transform influences from diverse musical styles.

The blues was bleeding the same blood as me. The blues didn’t have to explain the mystery of pain that I felt; it was there in the songs and voices of singers like Lonnie Johnson and Blind Lemon Jefferson, in the cries of their guitars.

You will never know what the meaning of Jazz is if ask what it means.

Jazz is an art form that depends on its antecedents. There must be respect for the people that have gone before.

I was walking down the street, and I saw a sewer digger on his lunch hour open his lunch pail, dig out a harmonica, knock out the cracker crumbs, and play a bunch of tunes on it. I was fascinated by that harmonica, so I stared the guy out of it. I just stared at him. He said, ‘Here, kid, take it. Get out of here.’

By its very nature, no one person can ever be the center of Jazz.

Music has to be accessible.

If you listen to Donny Hathaway, he had a lot of jazz elements in the way he sang, … For me, the two styles borrow from each other so much that sometimes it’s hard for me to make a distinction. When you hear Lalah sing the combination, that’s when she really shines – when she’s allowed to dip into her jazz when she wants to and then get soulful and do the R ‘n’ B thing.

It’s spontaneity that has always characterized Jazz music’s finest improvisers.

I’m always thinking about creating. My future starts when I wake up in the morning and see the light. Then I’m grateful.

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.

The problem is that a lot of the blues stations are late on Saturday night, and like a lot of people, I ain’t no vampire!

The qualities in music I consider most important are beauty, simplicity, originality, discrimination and sincerity.