Even in these times, there are still neighbors that will turn their backs on neighbors.
You need a team. You need people to push you. You need opponents.
Let the critics criticize and let the doers do.
The young very seldom lead anything in our country today. It’s been quite some time since a younger generation pushed an older one to a higher standard.
I wanted to make somebody feel like Coltrane made me feel, listening to it.
We’re blues people. And blues never lets tragedy have the last word.
Milk in a mother’s breast-that’s cool. Milk in a mouth-that’s cool too. But milk in my trumpet? Not so cool. I have to play that thing.
When I auditioned for my high school band the band director was excited because my father was known to be a great musician. When he heard me, he said ‘Are you sure you’re Ellis’s son?’
It’s important to address young people in the reopening of New Orleans. In rebuilding, let’s revisit the potential of American democracy and American glory.
Music is always for the listener, but the first listener is always the musician.
This rebuilding of New Orleans gives us the perfect opportunity to see if we’re ready to extend the legacy of Dr. King.
We looked up to our father. He still is much greater than us.
I try to put a lot of our music in my music – by that I mean of American music.
When did we begin to lose faith in our ability to effect change?
This music heals people because music is vibration, and the proper vibration heals.
My daddy expected that my brothers and I and our generation would make the world a better place. He had lived in an America of continual social progress.
The fact that we are culturally ignorant and we don’t know what our heritage is, the price that we pay is that we act outside of ourselves almost all the time. We make very bad decisions how we deal with other people and their culture.
Nothing else will ever capture the democratic process in sound as perfectly as Jazz.
I didn’t have a philosophical understanding of music until I came to New York. I didn’t understand how it applied to my kind and my generation. I thought it was just old people talking.
We no longer want to be a melting pot, because we don’t understand what is already melted.