Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The harmonica is a great instrument.
When we are on tour we also take chances.
Well, being a jazz musician is not a rose garden!
The only element of jazz that I keep is improvisation.
I think that music makers just really bless the planet.
All my life I'm trying to go forward and trying to grow.
Tim Price is truly blessed - he plays music because he loves it.
I feel very strongly when there's no chance for me to find a key to a piece.
There's a certain phraseology involved in jazz, and I've moved away from that.
If you feel you have the right key, you try to make some phrase or sound that will fit.
Jazz, for me, is a closed circuit, like the term baroque in the world of classical music.
Today jazz is still very much alive. Everywhere I go there's a new generation of musicians.
My father bought me a little cardboard accordion, and when I was three I got this little machine.
Jazz is very much alive. Everywhere I go there's a new generation of musicians playing Jazz music.
And if I have a strong point, it's that I like to believe it's not cheap or schmaltzy sentimentality.
Sometimes it works, sometimes it fails, but that's what we face when we're dealing with improvisation.
Coltrane was moving out of jazz into something else. And certainly Miles Davis was doing the same thing.
Other times I say: I would very much like to try to do something with this music, but after playing for a few minutes, I have to break off.
The youngster in me is still alive and kicking. I was infected by music at a very young age, so it's always kept me younger than springtime.
I think when you love music, you love a lot of it. Now when it comes to jazz, it's very much in the hyperions of height. You go exploring every night.
You have to react to what's around you in the moment, whatever the music is. Just think of it as some place you have to enter and you need to find the key.
You can be in Tokyo or Alberta at four in the morning in your hotel and you can still practice if you feel like it. A trombone cannot do that at four in the morning.
My parents had a pub and each Sunday there was an accordionist. They have told me that when I was in my cradle, I already was imitating the gestures of the musician.
[Jazz] is a music of freedom and wonder. It's our indigenous art form, and I'm still blessed to travel around the world and people lay out the carpet for us, so it's quite touching.
Spirituality is a word that is bandied about a lot. So I think it might mean different things to different people. I know that the United States of America is something of a religious country, but not necessarily a spiritual country.
My music, it breathes. It's the mysticism of sound. I'm a sound seeker, and I'm enthralled with it, by what it can do to change the molecules and uplift people. They feel something when we play. I can't take authorship for that. I can take that I'm in service.
I was born in Memphis. There was music all around me, really deep and special music. I heard all these great masters at a young age.There was a great genius in my town, Phineas Newborn, who is one of the greatest pianists ever on the planet. He took me under his wings at about 9 and he put me on the right track.
I was a time bomb waiting to detonate, burned out, sick of the music business, out of touch with everything and heavily abusing various substances, disillusioned with life, and intensely needed to work on my character. The only way I could see to do that was to withdraw completely from public life as I had known it before.
I was always moved by all of the music. As a young man, Duke Ellington and Lionel Hampton, Count Basie and all these great musicians would come through our town of Memphis. There wasn't adequate hotels, so these musicians - the lady who ran the theater knew my mother, who had a large house, and many of them would stay with us. So that was another great blessing, so I'm always around these great geniuses, and to realize their humanity is such a touching thing.
I dream of a peaceful world. Music is the best means I have to work on that dream. Each time I have the opportunity to play, it is another chance to tell the truth. Life on the planet has come down to such an acute degree of ADD it is terrifying. We are constantly being bombarded from all directions with information - most of it useless that serves to bifurcate the mind. I am afraid that people are going to go from birth to death and never know they were here or why they were here.
My parents had a sidewalk cafe: every Sunday there was an accordion player and apparently I went through the motions, squeezing a shoebox. One of the regulars in 'the cafe said to my father: "I think you should get your son an accordion-that's what he's trying to do, with that shoebox." So they got me a little cardboard diatonic accordion-I still have it. I started to play the National Anthem, and things like that. It seems I was musically gifted-but my parents just never pushed in that direction.