Sarah Vaughan

What was the competition? Well, I remember this Puerto Rican who came out in a short skirt and a gun.

Judy Garland was the singer I most wanted to sound like then, not to copy, but to get some of her soul and purity. A wonderful young voice.

There are notes between notes, you know.

There’s a category for me. I like to be referred to as a good singer of good songs in good taste.

My dream is to do whatever I want without any interference from the record company.

They always ask me the same questions. Where was I born? When did I start singing? Who have I worked with? I don’t understand why they can’t just talk to me without all that question bit.

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

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.’

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

A guitar is something you can hold and love and it’s never going to bug you. But here’s the secret about the guitar – it’s defiant. It will never let you conquer it. The more you get involved with it, the more you realize how little you know.

I wanna hear myself everywhere

It is people’s hearts that move the age.

There is something about music that keeps its distance even at the moment that it engulfs us. It is at the same time outside and away from us and inside and part of us. In one sense it dwarfs us, and in another we master it. We are led on and on, and yet in some strange way we never lose control.

The majority of people mistakenly feel they don’t need a live musical experience.

We didn’t have any segregation at the Cotton Club. No. The Cotton Club was wide open, it was free

First I was working on classical music that didn’t move me at all. I hated it. So I decided to discover the kinds of classical music that did move me—like Chopin, Satie, Beethoven, and certain Mozart songs. Mozart would play a counterpart with his left hand while using his right to mock it. It was blue, dark, shadowy and it made me feel something. That’s when I realized music was inside me.

Music is the tool to express life – and all that makes a difference.

Pop doesn’t really look back. It can’t. What makes pop work is simplicity.

I saw a vibraphone for the first time and knew immediately I had found my means of expression.

Everybody that you could name would join in our audiences from, Laguardia on down. Everybody came. Everybody came to the Cotton Club.

A Jazz musician is a juggler who uses harmonies instead of oranges.