Miller Williams Quotes

When somebody turned me on to a Coltrane record around seventh grade, I took up saxophone.

In fact, jazz has such a great feeling and great emotional content that it really doesn't require you to have technical understanding of it. I think you just have to allow your feelings to go with the music and you will find yourself carried along by it fairly quickly.

My music is jazz.

Sometimes I feel like a melody doesn't have anything to do with me, but it's just something that comes, is accumulated from me playing on the piano, and then this little creature just appears.

Change is always happening. That's one of the wonderful things about jazz music.

The first thing is, jazz is one of the few things to let you know that there is a God and there is a creation.

When I was 12, I began listening to John Coltrane and I developed a love for jazz, which I still have more and more each year.

Jazz music creates so many phenomenal figures.

My father was a jazz tenor sax player. He played in a lot of big bands. So I had that sound around me all the time. The first record that really caught my ear was Clifford Brown's 'Brownie Eyes.' I grew up listening to John Coltrane and Illinois Jacquet. This is where I come from... I love improvisational music.

As far as other instrumentalists, I used to love mellow sax players like Paul Desmond. I love piano.

I wanted to make somebody feel like Coltrane made me feel, listening to it.

To me, Bill's musical heart is in Earthworks, in the jazz they are playing, in the acoustic kit.

When I was a kid, I had some Charles Lloyd records.

I write to music, and Nina Simone is always on my playlist to write to. I mean, she's inspiring. She's truthful and real and raw.

Chick Corea was a great influence on me, musically, as I was growing up.

I'm an old Coltrane disciple just like I'm a Christian.

What about that Dave Brubeck live album, with a version of 'Like Someone in Love' on it, and long sax solos by Paul Desmond? That's what got me hooked on jazz.

I don't know any jazz stuff. I don't know how to jam in that way. So jamming, for me, is writing a tune.

I just wanted to experiment with the bass, and my main influence from Jaco Pastorius inspired me to write music in a certain way.

Listen to John Coltrane. When he plays 'A Love Supreme,' that guy is totally into himself.

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

I have all these computers and keyboards and synthesizers, and I rattle away. For instance, with The Lion King I wrote over four hours worth of tunes, and they were really pretty -but totally meaningless. So in the end I came up with material I liked. We worked on The Lion King for four years, but I wasn't toying until the last three-and-a-half weeks properly. On Crimson Tide, on the other hand, I just went in and within seconds I knew what I wanted.

Jazz musicians are the coolest people on the planet. Can I have some cool?

One of my big inspirations was Chuck Berry, and his playing was always about the rhythm and the lyrics. So I've always been that way in my playing, really.

I've never had a writer's block, but still I think: 'Is it going to happen this time?' You never know what you're going to get; you just put your fingers on the keys and hope.