There are no wrong notes.
So What or Kind of Blue were done in that era, the right hour, the right day. It’s over; it’s on the record.
If you’re trying to be hip, be hip.
Tom Jones is funny to me, man. I mean, he really tries to ape Ray Charles and Sammy Davis, you know. He’s nice-looking; he looks good doing it. I mean, if I was him, I’d do the same thing. If I was only thinking about making money.
John Lee Hooker is the funkiest man alive.
If you love them in the morning with their eyes full of crust; if you love them at night with their hair full of rollers, chances are, you’re in love.
Don’t play what’s there, play what’s not there.
When I heard Coleman Hawkins, I learned to play ballads.
I always listen to what I can leave out.
Trane was the perfect saxophonist for Monk’s music because of the space that Monk always used. Trane could fill up all that space with all them chords and sounds he was playing then.
I began to realize that some of the things Ornette Coleman had said about things being played three or fours ways, independently of each other, were true because Bach had also composed that way.
In high school I was best in music class on the trumpet, but the prizes went to the boys with blue eyes. I made up my mind to outdo anybody white on my horn.
You can tell whether a person plays well or not by the way he carries the instrument, whether it means something to him or not.
To keep creating you have to be about change.
Play what you know and then play above that.
You want to know how I started playing trumpet? My father bought me one, and I studied the trumpet. And everybody I heard that I liked, I picked up things from.
Food makes my mind sluggish.
In improvisation, there are no mistakes.
I still got my Ferrari.
Monk taught me more about music composition than anyone else on 52nd Street.