Musician Quotes

I'd been in love before - I was always in love.

I went with Lionel Hampton for three years. Out of that came a trip to Europe.

I was the most subtle person in the world.

I was raised in Chicago and I guess that was one of the special breeding grounds for gangsters of all colors. That was the Detroit of the gangster world. The car industry was thugs.

I was married for 36 years but now I'm free.

I was inspired by a lot of people when I was young. Every band that came through town, to the theater, or the dance hall. I was at every dance, every night club, listened to every band that came through, because in those days we didn't have MTV, we didn't have television.

I never felt like I had a mother.

I guess hip-hop has been closer to the pulse of the streets than any music we've had in a long time. It's sociology as well as music, which is in keeping with the tradition of black music in America.

I got in the school band and the school choir. It all hit me like a ton of bricks, everything just came out. I played percussion for a while, and stayed after school forever just tinkering around with different things, the clarinets and the violins.

I don't remember feeling love.

Everybody has their idiosyncrasies.

Every country can be defined through their food, their music and their language. That's the soul of a country.

China's got a billion people and a hit record over there is a million records. You know that ain't right.

Arts is just as important as military defense, you know? Emotional defense is just as important.

All guys get into music because they love music and they also want to get the girls.

After every war, there was a significant change in the music, and I can understand how that happened. If you participate in protecting the country, you think you can be part of it, but you come back home and it's worse than ever.

A great song can make a terrible singer sound good, but a good singer - you put a great song on top of that, you're really in great shape!

I started imagining this whole different world. It was a society of musicians, a family I hoped I could belong to one day.

I got a scholarship to Seattle University and I was writing arrangements for singers and everybody. But the music course was too dry and I really wanted to get away from home.

I found this out over the years, that racism is a thinly veiled disguise over economics and money. It really is.

If architecture is frozen music then music must be liquid architecture.

Every day, my daddy told me the same thing. 'Once a task is just begun, never leave it till it's done. Be the labour great or small, do it well or not at all.'

We were in the heart of the ghetto in Chicago during the Depression, and every block - it was probably the biggest black ghetto in America - every block also is the spawning ground practically for every gangster, black and white, in America too.

Imagine what a harmonious world it could be if every single person, both young and old shared a little of what he is good at doing.

All is fair in love and songwriting.

A record is just a snapshot of where you are at any time.

A lot of pop people out there are cool, but they overdo it.

A lot of my music is slow and subtle. The subtly is what I enjoy about making music.

In college I had a weekend gig at a restaurant, a solo thing that was the best practice I could have ever had. That's where I learned to coordinate my singing and my piano playing.

I'd done recordings, little demos, since I was in college, which I used to get gigs. But I never thought I'd have a record label.