Jay McShann Quotes

As an improviser I'm now pretty comfortable with trios, so I'm thinking of working up to quartets.

I was a born rock n' roll sax player.

When I was younger, I'd go to the Museum of Television and Radio in New York and watch this beautiful clip of Billie Holiday playing with a bassist, a pianist and Gerry Mulligan, who was a friend of mine, on baritone sax. At one point, she looks over at Gerry, and they just smile. When those moments happen, it's just lovely.

Blues has always been a huge part of my life.

I can't really say enough about Chris Potter. He is one of the greatest musicians I have ever known, and every second I have been on the band stand with him has been an absolute pleasure.

My music is jazz.

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

As far as rock groups, I really like Stone Temple Pilots. As for classical composers, it's Bach. I love Paganini, too, the Italian composer who would break strings during a performance and finish playing on just one string. Someone I would have loved to play with is Jimi Hendrix.

But my big thing was always the blues.

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

I had the house rhythm section at a club called the Sundown in Hartford. Stan Getz came up and played with us.

Bernstein grew up in my building in New York. He's a very, very fine player. When he was a kid, he came by to find out what was going on in the world of jazz.

A jazz musician is a juggler who uses harmonies instead of oranges.

In my view a jazz musician is a great musician.

Hey, look at this guy Kenny G. with his thing, walking up and down the aisles of the concert hall and running off the stage and playing the same time. It's old hat!

I think the challenges for me was to go into the studio with these incredible jazz players and come up to their level of excellence. That's always a challenge.

I feel very honored to be playing with Bill Pierce. He's such a great musician.

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'.

I'm a keen musician. Me and my mates have a great times jamming and recording stuff. We have a great band behind us and have turned my nursery-rhyme songs into quite credible pieces of music.

I just play blues for fun.

I knew Charlie Parker, and he gave us such a gift with his music. He put so much into so little space, and it was tragic that he died so young.

When I was in New York, I put together a show; I put together this really great band and performed at this place called Littlefield in Brooklyn. It was really fun. I did, like, 10 standards, and then I just hopped around different bars like Mona's and different jazz clubs in New York just singing because I know all the standards so well.

I have some friends, and they're super-hipster. And they're like, 'All I wanna do is sing in a jazz bar and to just make it to pay for the rent.' And I'm like, 'Cool... That's not what I wanna do. I want as many people as possible to go to my concert.'

Herb Wong was an incredible man. We met when I was performing with Clark Terry at the Wichita Jazz Festival around 1974.

Right before I moved out to San Francisco, I played in Buddy Guy's band.