The most important thing I look for in a musician is whether he knows how to listen.
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?
I don’t need time. What I need is a deadline!
On becoming more acquainted with the word of the Bible, I began to understand so much more of what I had been taught, and of what I had learned about life and about the people in mine.
A musical profit outweighs a financial loss.
Gray skies are just clouds passing over.
Jazz is a good barometer of freedom.
Playing ‘bop’ is like playing Scrabble with all the vowels missing.
Somehow I suspect that if Shakespeare were alive today, he might be a jazz fan himself.
Jazz today, as always in the past, is a matter of thoughtful creation, not mere unaided instinct.
Selfishness can be a virtue. Selfishness is essential to survival, and without survival we cannot protect those whom we love more than ourselves.
The problem of expressing the contributions that Benny Carter has made to popular music is so tremendous it completely fazes me, so extraordinary a musician is he.
Of the One O’Clock Lab Band after hearing their performance, and sitting in with them at the White House: “I wish it were mine”.
Yet, every time God’s children have thrown away fear in pursuit of honesty-trying to communicate themselves, understood or not, miracles have happened.
Without a deadline, baby, I wouldn’t do nothing.
If anybody was Mr. Jazz it was Louis Armstrong. He was the epitome of jazz and always will be. He is what I call an American standard, an American original.
New York is a place where the rich walk, the poor drive Cadillacs, and beggars die of malnutrition with thousands of dollars hidden in their mattresses.
Tomorrow is in the wings waiting for you to sound her entrance fanfare.
I fluffed off the guy who kept requesting tunes all night, then found out he was the King’s son.
New music? Hell, there’s been no new music since Stravinsky.
Jazz is the only unhampered, unhindered expression of complete freedom yet produced in this country.