Tadd Dameron

The saxophone is an imperfect instrument, especially the tenor and soprano, as far as intonation goes. The challenge is to sing on an imperfect instrument that is outside of your body.

You compose because you want to somehow summarize in some permanent form your most basic feelings about being alive, to set down some sort of permanent statement about the way it feels to live now, today.

The true musician is to bring light into people’s hearts.

If my own work had more importance than any others, it’s because the piano is the key instrument in music.

One very important thing I learned from Monk was his complete dedication to music. That was his reason for being alive. Nothing else mattered except music, really.

I do Jazz, Blues, Country and so forth. I do them all like a good utility man.

The violin, the saxophone, the trumpet: Each makes a very different sound but the very same notes. That’s pretty heavy, you know ? Imagine how many different races make up the human race. I’m called colored, you’re called white, he’s called something else. We still got an asshole and a mouth. Pardon me.

Jazz music is the real deal.

Mozart tapped the source from which all music flows, expressing himself with a spontaneity and refinement and breathtaking rightness.

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

Hot can be cool and cool can be hot and each can be both. But hot or cool man, Jazz is Jazz.

Sometimes I think I was making music through the wrong end of a magnifying glass.

You can’t rehearse a blues darlin’.

Music is the shorthand of emotion

A great thing about being a musician is you don’t stop until the day you die.