Merle Haggard Quotes

Bill Evans is a real serious jazz pianist who, in my book, crossed over boundaries in terms of color. He used the piano as his canvas.

I'm a trumpet player, and I sing jazz.

Rock & roll fan that I am, Thelonious Monk is probably my favorite musical artist.

I love Monk's song, 'Just a Gigolo.' It's probably a minor song for him, but whenever I hear a recording of him playing it, I'm mesmerized because Monk clearly loved pop music. He took it very seriously and made an amazing thing out of it.

Anything by Gonzalez Rubalcaba is unbelievable. I've been listening to the best of Django Reinhardt.

I've been invited to do a trio with a fantastic jazz guitarist and a harmonica player.

I think Wes Montgomery is the greatest jazz guitarist that ever lived.

When I found the music of Monk I finally found music that fit that horn. Every one of his tunes fit it perfectly.

I started off with the really funky stuff like Ramsey Lewis, Milt Jackson, Kenny Burrell.

Bud Powell's probably the biggest influence on my piano playing.

When I began listening to saxophones, I was first attracted to Coleman Hawkins.

Well, I guess my unease with that is... I'm always a little uneasy with that phrase - smooth jazz, as opposed to what?

The first time I heard a Billie Holiday record, I thought, 'What's so great about Billie Holiday?'

The first jazz pianist I heard was Thelonious Monk. My father was listening to an album of his called 'Monk's Dream' almost every day from the time I was born.

Coltrane would do what you'd get a Roland Pro Tools module to do but with a group of jazz musicians.

I skipped school one day to see Dizzy Gillespie, and that's where I met Coltrane. Coltrane and Jimmy Heath just joined the band, and I brought my trumpet, and he was sitting at the piano downstairs waiting to join Dizzy's band. He had his saxophone across his lap, and he looked at me and he said, 'You want to play?'

Possibly, I should have been a jazz singer from the beginning.

I love Ornette Coleman. I love Don Cherry. I love the way those guys play.

I was spoiled by Monk's music because it was so good, so complete.

I don't want to sound as if I'm doing something tremendously special. But I am a jazz fan.

When Hank Jones had his night off, I would get somebody to take my place as intermission pianist and I'd play the show with Ella, so I would get a chance to play with Ray Brown and Charlie Smith as well.

One performer whose band played my music better than I could myself was Art Farmer. He recorded 'Sing Me Softly of the Blues' and 'Ad Infinitum'.

In some ways, jazz is the most precise of art forms and the loosest in the sense that it's all about improvisation, but the musicianship required is kind of insane. To actually play with real jazz musicians is a different level of musicianship that almost has no equal in any other form of music in the world.

So I went into jazz and performed in jazz clubs all over the country.

I listened to classical music. I listened to jazz. I listened to everything. And I started becoming interested in the sounds of jazz. And I went to a concert of Jazz at the Philharmonic when we lived in Omaha, Nebraska, and I saw Charlie Parker play and Billie Holiday sing and Lester Young play, and that did it. I said, 'That's what I want to do.'