Not too slow, not too fast. Kind of half-fast. -- Louis Armstrong
Home / Jazznews / Great Quotes
A+ R A-
Great Quotes


I haven’t a great jazz band, and I don’t want one.


“I’ve said that playing the blues is like having to be black twice. Stevie Ray Vaughan missed on both counts, but I never noticed”


“Musically, I love to talk just off the top of my head & that’s what Jazz is all about.”


“Jazz attracted me because in it I found a formal perfection and instrumental precision that I admire in classical music, but which popular music doesn’t have.”


I always think of music as interior decoration. So, if you have all kinds of music, you are fully decorated !


“I’m an interpreter of stories. When I perform it’s like sitting down at my piano and telling fairy stories.”


Well if I could play like Wynton (Marsalis), I wouldn’t play like Wynton.”


“… I don’t know what I’m doing, but I know how to do it”


“Playing is my way of thinking, talking, communicating” Lionel Hampton