Oscar Peterson Quotes

Some people try to get very philosophical and cerebral about what they're trying to say with jazz. You don't need any prologues, you just play.

First of all, I swore it was two people playing. When I finally admitted to myself that was one man, I gave up the piano for a month. I figured it was hopeless to practice.

The music field was the first to break down racial barriers, because in order to play together, you have to love the people you are playing with, and if you have any racial inhibitions, you wouldn't be able to do that.

Montreal was a very active jazz center until club owners started putting in strippers instead of music. Before long, there was nothing to hear.

I don't do something because I think it will sell 30 million albums. I couldn't care less. If it sells one, it sells one.

I'm a musician and, just as the critics are hard on me, I'm hard on the critics.

We're not like pop musicians who have to perform the same top ten tunes every night of a tour.

If the average jazz artist uses his head and at the outset of his career realizes he won't play as well at fifty as he does at twenty-five, he won't be in a line-up outside the Salvation Army when he's fifty.

I play as I feel.

I am the worlds laziest writer.

Sweets [Edison] can say more with one note than any other Jazz player alive ... an approach that stresses simplicity, glorious tone, natural potency and an unmatched affinity. He is a unique stylist in our music.