American Pianist Quotes

Nat King Cole

Bill Evans

Lionel Hampton

Dinah Washington

Liberace

Earl Hines

Pete Johnson

As the painter needs his framework of parchment, the improvising musical group needs its framework in time.

If I play Tchaikovsky I play his melodies and skip his spiritual struggles…If there's any time left over I fill in with a lot of runs up and down the keyboard.

When recordings replaced concerts as the dominant mode of hearing music, our conception of the nature of performance and of music itself was altered.

It would be an attempt to define the role, responsibility, and path of the performing musician. Our simple job is to bring beauty and inspiration to others and to do this through the most honest and humble search to find these qualities within our unique selves and then within our unique work; to painstakingly increase our knowledge and to refine and re-refine our results until we are certain that until some new enlightenment falls to us, we have done the best that we possibly can; and that as in any human endeavour which attempts to transcend its mortal bounds, we always know that we still do not know.

Martin Berkofsky

I don't expect people who listen to Emerson, Lake, and Palmer to come hear me. I accept that reality.

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.

You may have holes in your shoes, but don't let the people out front know it. Shine the tops.

Music isn't enough. Performers aren't enough. There must be someone that loves music as much as life. For you, and remember this always, those of us with something urgent to say, we give everything.

Music, the most abstract and uncanny art, is an eternal river of sound moving through time. We can free ourselves from whatever may be holding us back, and join that flowing river.

William Westney

I got a gal, she lives up on the hill
Well, this woman's tryin' to quit me, Lord, but I love her still.

Lord, I love my man better than I love myself
And if he don't have me, he won't have nobody else.

In Africa I discovered what the true purpose of a musician is. We are historians, and it is our purpose to tell the people the true story of our past, and to extend a better vision of the future.

But it's always jazz. You can put a new dress on her,... but no matter what kind of clothes you put on her, she's the same old broad.

Some people will think I'm great even if I play like an idiot and some people will think I'm an idiot even if I'm great.

There's one heaven, one earth, and one queen, and your Elizabeth is an imposter.

During a 1959 tour of England

Dinah Washington