Ever since I've ever heard music, I thought it should be very clean, very precise - as clean as possible, anyway, and more or less tuned to people. Something they could understand, something that was beautiful, you know?
I put quite a bit of study into the horn, that's true. In fact, the neighbors threatened to ask my mother to move once, you know.
One time, when I was in my teens, jamming in a Kansas City club, I was doing all right until I tried doing double tempo on 'Body and Soul.' Everybody fell out laughing. I went home and cried and didn't want to play again for three months.
Definitely, study is absolutely necessary in all forms - it's just like any talent that's born within somebody. It's just like a good pair of shoes when you put a shine on it, you know? Like, schooling brings out the polish of any talent. It happens anywhere in the world.
If you come on a band tense, you're going to play tense. If you come a little bit foolish, act just a little bit foolish, and let yourself go, better ideas will come.
Every time I hear a recording I've made, I hear all kinds of things I could improve or things I should have done. There's always so much more to be done in music. It's so vast.
I realized by using the high notes of the chords as a melodic line, and by the right harmonic progression, I could play what I heard inside me. That's when I was born.
I could hear it sometimes, but I couldn't play it. I'd been getting bored with the stereotyped changes that were being used. I found that by using the higher intervals of a chord as a melody line and backing them with related changes, I could play the thing I'd been hearing.
They teach you there's a boundary line to music. But, man, there's no boundary line to art.
Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom.
Music is basically melody, harmony, and rhythm. But people can do much more with music than that. It can be very descriptive in all kinds of ways, all walks of life.
I became bitter, hard, cold. I was always on a panic - couldn't buy clothes or a good place to live.
Don't play the saxophone. Let it play you.
You've got to learn your instrument. Then, you practice, practice, practice. And then, when you finally get up there on the bandstand, forget all that and just wail.
If you don't live it, it won't come out your horn.
