Jazz Musicians

"It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)."

"Every man prays in his own language."

"There are simply two kinds of music, good music and the other kind ... the only yardstick by which the result should be judged is simply that of how it sounds. If it sounds good it's successful; if it doesn't it has failed."

"It's like an act of murder; you play with intent to commit something."

"The piano players were very important in the early days, and the great piano players were always on the East Coast; there never was anybody in the West who could play two notes. (By West I mean ; in those days there was no other West to speak of, west of that.) , who was mainly a writer and had more music published than anyone else, played piano like one of those high school teachers in Washington; as a matter of fact, high school teachers played better jazz. Among other things, his rhythm was unsteady; but that's the kind of piano the West was geared up to. On the other hand, the piano players on the East Coast did the most impossible things. If you dig up the early piano rolls or records by , you will hear the most beautiful and perfect performances. was a giant of those days, too. It is one of my great regrets that when the Lion used to come up to my house I didn't have a recording machine so that I could preserve some of those early performances of his."

"[Asked about the vogue for Rock 'n' Roll and calypso] [N]o matter what you call it, music is as good as it sounds. Music is an oral art. Until you hear it, it is not music and if it sounds good it is good."

"Playing "Bop" is like playing Scrabble with all the vowels missing."

"My band is my instrument more than the piano."

"I know what sounds well on a trombone and I know what sounds well on a trumpet and they are not the same. [...] I know what Tricky Sam can play on a trombone and I know what Lawrence Brown can play on a trombone and they are not the same either."

"[Y]ou've got to write with certain men in mind. You write just for their abilities and natural tendencies and give them places where they do their best—certain entrances and background stuff. You got to know each man to know what he'll react well to. One guy likes very simple ornamentation; another guy likes ornamentation better than the theme because it gives him a feeling of being a second mind. Every musician has his favorite licks and you gotta write to them."

"You can't write music right [...] until you know how the man that'll play it plays poker."

"[Expressing a liking for trains] Folks can't rush you until you get off."

"As Bach says [...] if you ain't got a left hand, you ain't worth a hoot in hell."

"I'm a businessman. I work for business people. The kind of thing they say is: Now we've sold a lot of records, let's sell some more."

"The buzzard told the monkey "You're chokin' me Release your hold and I'll set you free" The monkey looked the buzzard right dead in the eye and said "Your story's touching but it sounds like a lie.""

"A buzzard took the monkey for a ride in the air The monkey thought that everything was on the square The buzzard tried to throw the monkey off his back But the monkey grabbed his neck and said — "Now listen, Jack..." "Straighten up and fly right Straighten up and fly right Straighten up and fly right Cool down, papa, don't you blow your top.""

"«There's just one thing I can't understand. My income tax!”»."

"Critics don't buy records. They get 'em free."

"I'm a musician at heart, I know I'm not really a singer. I couldn't compete with real singers. But I sing because the public buys it."

"I … started out to become a jazz pianist; in the meantime I started singing and I sang the way I felt and that's just the way it came out."

"Madison Avenue is afraid of the dark."

"I felt something impossible for me to explain in words. Then when they took her away, it hit me. I got scared all over again and began to feel giddy. Then it came to me— I was a father.""

"I don't know where it's going. Maybe it's going to hell. You can't make anything go anywhere. It just happens."

"Even people who don’t know much about jazz are aware that jazz musicians are meant to be 'characters' – free-spirited types whose absorption in music generates bizarre behaviour. Though this hipster mythology is exaggerated, it seemed made for Thelonious Monk. His mystique was compounded by his unforgettable name (albeit the same as his father's), his taste for exotic headgear, a penchant for breaking into impromptu dances on the bandstand and a jabbing, idiosyncratic piano style punctuated by the silences which also marked his everyday demeanour. But Monk's media status as the 'high priest of bebop' obscured the real nature of his achievement. At a time when modern jazz was dominated by harmonic legerdemain and omnivorous technique, he showed that a deep-rooted personal vision was still possible. Monk's compositions were unlike anyone else's, full of curiously stretched and sharply angled chords, wrong-footing rhythms, melodies that could be gnomic, rich or grainily lyrical. He defied facility. When you played Monk, you played him on his terms, and his best interpreter was probably himself. His approach to the piano could seem splayed and halting – one fleet-fingered rival dismissed him as 'hamstrung' – but he could produce marvellous, probing colours, somehow getting in between the keys to make the piano seem the ultimate blues instrument. And he swung enormously, with spikey accents and clangorous, tumbling runs. As a soloist or accompanist, his timing was perfect, and he could galvanise a rhythm section by knowing exactly when and when not to play. Listening to Monk can easily become a lifelong habit, since what he has to offer is unavailable anywhere else."

"Unlike many piano players, I love Monk's playing very much. He was brought to my attention by Richard Abrams, a pianist in Chicago, and we used to analyse Monk's playing. We found that Monk's penchant for playing the piano is not in velocity, and not in dynamics, but in sound and s. He has a lot of other devices for producing the "sound"—I've noticed a lot of times, playing in clubs, where the audience is inattentive, you play something of a Monk nature and use that sonority, automatically their ears respond to it. No other piano player has done more to find out the notes that really produce sound than Monk. To completely toss him aside as a pianistic influence is an asinine view."

"That I like. That's Monk ... I think Monk has developed a certain thing. It's not the ordinary left hand like and a lot of piano players used to use; he's done something different"

"A few weeks ago I made a call at his 63rd St apartment and found him practising very thoughtfully on his Klein piano. I felt pretty good when I realised how satisfied he was with his instrument. He invited me to try it out. First I played one of his compositions which I learned a few weeks ago at the Spotlite which he had played with "Hawk". Later I played some of my own tunes which he seemed to like. We promptly agreed to swap three piano arrangements of our tunes. I would arrange "Stratosphere," "Striving," and "Sailing" for him and he agreed to arrange "Ruby, My Dear," "Round Midnight" and another very expressive tune which he hadn't named or whose name he had forgotten. On the day of the proposed swap my tunes were the only ones completed. However, I haven't given up all hope of eventually learning his tunes which I will play morning, noon, and night."

"His is the sort of music that spans time ... it's something that's happening, and it always feels good to me. I can always readily identify with it, and it always has a freshness about it because of the way he constructs his phrases and the kinds of twists it has. I sometimes would like to hear him in a context with some more adventuresome musicians."

"[Reported exchange on telephone in 1980] "Thelonious, are you touching the piano at all these days?" "No, I'm not." "Do you want to get back to playing?" "No, I don't." "I'm only in town for a few days; would you like me to come and visit, to talk about the old days?" "No, I wouldn't." When I repeated this to Barry Harris, the pianist who was much closer to him than almost anyone else in the last years, he said, "You're lucky. You got complete sentences. With most people he just says, 'No.'""

"That piano player sounded as honest as a little child. I think the left hand during the first part was a little hard. It could be Monk. Also it could be Mingus playing piano—sometimes he plays piano like that. I liked the record, the honesty of it and the good feeling it had. However, I think it could have been a little better; so I'll give it a three. I'd rather hear wrong notes being played by a person with good feeling than another person playing perfect, like a typewriter, and sound cold."

"All I can say is, Monk writes some beautiful tunes. When it comes to being a piano player, I'll see you later."

"Count Basie at Town Hall ... No, I'm only kidding; of course it was Thelonious Monk. There's been a lot of pro and con talk about Thelonious through the years, but from the beginning I was pro. I was fascinated, and I wondered how he arrived at these things. Eventually I found out, by studying and analyzing them. Now, he is not a virtuoso pianist, but there is real thought behind what he is composing. It's all very well laid out."

"Pianistically, I don't think has anything to worry about, but if he (Monk) gets that stride thing going a little faster, I don't know... Maybe will have to come back. Pianistically, he's beautiful. (A promoter I know uses that phrase; I guess he likes the way it rolls off his tongue.) But Thelonious is pianistically beautiful. He approaches the piano somehow from an angle, and it is the right angle. He does the thing completely and thoroughly... He hasn't been influenced through the traditional techniques because he hasn't worked through the keyboard composers and, therefore, has his own complete approach of musical thinking. He is such a thinking musician, and I think this is something a lot of people forget about Monk. They somehow feel he's eccentric, but Monk knows exactly what he's doing. Structurally, and musically, he's very aware of every note he plays."

"I don't see how a record company can record something like that. You know the way Monk plays—he never gives any support to a rhythm section. When I had him on my date, I had him lay out until the ensemble. I like to hear him play, but I can't stand him in a rhythm section unless it's one of his own songs ... I can't understand a record like this."

"Working with Monk is like falling down a dark elevator shaft."

"Working with Monk brought me close to a musical architect of the highest order. I felt I learned from him in every way — through the senses, theoretically, technically. I would talk to Monk about musical problems, and he would sit at the piano and show me the answers just by playing them. I could watch him play and find out the things I wanted to know. Also, I could see a lot of things that I didn't know about at all."

"I know this from somewhere—it seems as though every time I turn on the radio this seems to slip in; and I've always liked it. It's cute, real cute; and although it's sort of not in my department and I don't know too much about that type of music, I like it an awful lot. Wonderful piano ..."

"The piano ain't got no wrong notes."

"Monk enters the studio and starts playing, the rest of the musicians join him. After few minutes of play the technician from his room shouts and stops the band.] Monk: Why did we stop? Technician: I thought you were rehearsing. Monk: Aren't we always?"

"All musicians are subconsciously mathematicians."

"Interviewer: What other interests do you have? Monk: Life in general. Interviewer: What do you do about it? Monk: Keep breathing. Interviewer: What do you think the purpose of life is? Monk: To die."

"It reminded me of , and that's got to be good. Rhythm section has the right groove, too. Drummer made me think of . Hey, play that again. (Later.) Yeah! He sounds like a piano player! (Hums theme.) You can keep changing keys all the time doing that. Sounds like something that was studied and figured out. And he can play it; you know what's happening with this one. Yeah, he was on a Bobby Timmons kick. He knows what's happening."

"Which is the way to the toilet?"

": You liked the arrangement? Monk: Did you make the arrangement? It was crazy. Feather: No. Monk: It was a bunch of musicians who were together, playing an arrangement. It sounded so good, it made me like the song better! Solos ... the trombone sounded good ... that was a good lead trumpet player too ... I don't know how to rate it, but I'd say it was top-notch."

"I believe that any "awareness" of life is "spiritual" since awareness can only be a quality of the spirit not of the material world or of matter and machines. Only a spiritual being has awareness. But if you mean "spiritual" in the sense of a kind of "celebration of Life", then yes, I write music to celebrate life. I think most artists do, no matter how they themselves describe it. It's the joy of creating. It's a way of life."

"Acoustic, electric, latin, free – Chick Corea’s career seems to have touched all the bases in today’s jazz scene. Yet that variety is firmly centred in some abiding principles: a passion for music, the piano, and performance. They were a kind of birthright. [...] Working with all kinds of bands, and absorbing all kinds of styles – with a special fondness for fiery Latin rhythms – Corea built a reputation as composer and player."

"Jazz's most protean and unpredictable character."

"You a motherfucker!"

"The most prolific and versatile of any modern jazz musician"

"It's a way of life for me. To me, Scientology is the very thing that artists need, in the sense that it's not a religion that you have to change the way that you pray or think about the Creator. What's incredible about Scientology is that this is the first time there's been a real technology on human relationships. To me, that's what's missing in the world. Like most of us, I grew up in a mechanical world. And when I got into music, it was mechanical in the sense of choosing notes and chords. Missing were the humanities. What ever happened to how you really live? How you feel? How you relate to people? How you reach out and help someone? I think that's one of the most basic, natural tendencies all people have—to help. Scientology gives you the necessary tools to be successful at helping someone."