Stan Getz Quotes

Life is too full of distractions nowadays. When I was a kid we had a little Emerson radio and that was it. We were more dedicated. We didn't have a choice.

You can read all the textbooks and listen to all the records, but you have to play with musicians that are better than you.

People think that I play effortlessly. I remember doing a record date with Bill Evans and afterwards he said to me, you make it sound so easy but when I get right up next to you you're working hard and making it sound easy!

If you like an instrument that sings, play the saxophone. At its best it's like the human voice.

A good quartet is like a good conversation among friends interacting to each other's ideas.

I've done some dastardly things but what can I do except make amends and apologize?

Hearing myself so much all the time, I don't think I sound that special all the time because it's me.

I never have any trouble playing anything I can think of. The trouble is in thinking of what to play.

Other than conversation, no other art form can give the satisfaction of spontaneous interaction like Jazz.

My dark sound could be heard across a room clearer than somebody with a reedy sound. It had more projection. My sound always seemed to fill a room.

The value of jazz still has to be clarified. People involve themselves with its superficialities without digging for its soul.

You know, when I'm playing, I think of myself in front of the Wailing Wall with a saxophone in my hands, and I'm davening, I'm really telling it to the Wall.

I played in rhumba bands, mickey mouse bands; all kinds of bands.

As far as playing jazz, no other art form, other than conversation, can give the satisfaction of spontaneous interaction.

I had a 10-year heroin habit and kicked that. Then I became an alcoholic. I drank two fifth's a day.

It's like a language. You learn the alphabet, which are the scales. You learn sentences, which are the chords. And then you talk extemporaneously with the horn. It's a wonderful thing to speak extemporaneously, which is something I've never gotten the hang of. But musically I love to talk just off the top of my head. And that's what jazz music is all about.

I cannot play a lie. I have to believe in what I play or it won't come out.

There are four qualities essential to a great jazzman. they are taste, courage, individuality, and irreverence.

I never consciously tried to conceive of what my sound should be ... I never tried to imitate anybody, but when you love somebody's music, you're influenced ... I really don't know how I developed my sound, but it comes from a combination of my musical conception and no doubt the basic shape of the oral cavity ...

I practiced saxophone eight hours a day for the first two years I played.

Records used to be documents, but now record companies want product.

The saxophone is an imperfect instrument, especially the tenor and soprano, as far as intonation goes. The challenge is to sing on an imperfect instrument that is outside of your body.