I can’t stand to sing the same song the same way two nights in succession, let alone two years or ten years. If you can, then it ain’t music, it’s close-order drill or exercise or yodeling or something, not music.
Music Quotes
The wise musicians are those who play what they can master.
I know only two tunes: one of them is “Yankee Doodle” and the other one isn’t.
People don’t understand the kind of fight it takes to record what you want to record the way you want to record it.
My biggest kick in music – playing or writing – is when I have a problem. Without a problem to solve, how much interest do you take in anything?
It’s nonsense to talk so much about being faithful to the ideals of one’s youth. There is room for development surely. I have always felt happiest in life when I thought I had added if only a little to the ideals of my youth. What is life more than a struggle for the realization truths? […]
No two people on earth are alike, and it’s got to be that way in music, or it isn’t music.
Playing ‘Bop’ is like playing Scrabble with all the vowels missing.
A flutist who is moved to tears by his own performance will soon make the listeners laugh because of the sounds that he produces.
I joined Count Basie’s band to make a little money and see the world. For almost two years I didn’t see anything but the inside of a Blue Goose bus, and I never got to send home a quarter.
