Jazz is played from the heart. You can even live by it. Always love it.
You see, pops, that’s the kind of talk that’s ruining the music. Everyone’s trying to do something new, no one trying to learn the fundamentals first. All them young cats playing their wierd chords. And what happens? No one’s working.
You can’t take it for granted. Even if we have two, three days off I still have to blow that horn a few hours to keep up the chops. I mean I’ve been playing 50 years, and that’s what I’ve been doing in order to keep in that groove there.
Never play a thing the same way twice.
Every time I close my eyes blowing that trumpet of mine, I look right into the heart of good old New Orleans. It has given me something to live for.
I don’t need words. It’s all in the phrasing.
There’s only two ways to sum up music; either it’s good or it’s bad. If it’s good you don’t mess about it, you just enjoy it.
I had a chance to play with the best musicians that were coming through because I was pretty good myself or else they wouldn’t have tolerated with me.
At first it was just a misdemeanor, but then you lost the “mis-de” and you just got meaner and meaner...
If it hadn’t been for Jazz, there wouldn’t be no rock and roll.
As a youngster in the little orphanage home in New Orleans, I was the bugler of the institution. When I got to be around 13 or 14 years old, they took me off the bugle and put me in the little brass band.
I’m a spade, you’re an ofay. Let’s play.
Red beans and ricely yours.
When I was young and very green, I worte that tune, Sister Kate, and someone said that’s fine, let me publish it for you. I’ll give you fifty dollars. I didn’t know nothing about papers, and business, and I sold it outright.
If ya ain’t got it in ya, ya can’t blow it out.
And I think to myself what a wonderful world. Oh, yeah...
When you’re dead, you’re done.
Not too slow, not too fast. Kind of like half-fast.
Jazz is what I play for a living.
Don’t do nothing halfway, else you find yourself dropping more than can be picked up.