When I heard Coleman Hawkins, I learned to play ballads.
Music is an addiction.
Keith, how does it feel to be a genius?
Music is a funny thing when you really come to think about it.
You can’t play anything on a horn that Louis Armstrong hasn’t played.
It’s always been a gift with me, hearing music the way I do. I don’t know where it comes from, it’s just there and I don’t question it.
A legend is an old man with a cane...
Jazz is an Uncle Tom word. They should stop using that word for selling. I told George Wein the other day that he should stop using it.
He sounded to me like he’s supposed to be the savior of jazz. Sometimes people speak as though someone asked them a question. Well, no one asked him a question.
I really liked Wynton when I first met him. He’s still a nice young man, only confused.
If you got up on the bandstand at Minton’s and couldn’t play, you were not only going to be embarrassed by the people ignoring you or booing you, you might get your ass kicked.
I’ve always told the musicians in my band to play what they know and then play above that. Because then anything can happen, and that’s where great art and music happens.
But you’ve got to have style in whatever you do – writing, music, painting, fashion, boxing, anything.
When I got into music I went all the way into music; I didn’t have no time after that for nothing else.
Bad music is what will ruin music, not the instruments musicians choose to play.
See, music is about style.
I hate how white people always try to take credit for something after they discover it. Like it wasn’t happening before they found out about it – which most times is always late, and they didn’t have nothing to do with it happening. Then, they try to take all the credit, try to cut everybody black out.
Time isn’t the main thing. It’s the only thing.
Naw, I wasn’t going to sell my principles for them. I wanted to be accepted as a good musician and that didn’t call for no grinning, but just being able to play the horn good. And that’s what I did then and now. Critics can take that or leave it.
I’m a fiend when it comes to good pastry, and the French make the best as far as I’m concerned.
The metric system ruined me.