Quotes by Ray Brown

I will have a song that I'm in love with for a couple of months and then I'll go to something else. That's just constantly changing. And sometimes I will go back to old one that I haven't heard for a long time.

They played so good it was frightening. And I, of course, being young, was in awe of everything that was going on and rightly so. I mean, it was too good to believe.

We had to do a lot of rehearsals to get it so that it was playable. What it did was make you practice. That's good for any musician to have that kind of pressure. It brings things out of you that might not come out if you don't have to reach for something all the time.

Well, I think that I've been learning how to, attempting to learn how to write for a trio. I've sort of taken a page out of Duke Ellington's book. I watched Ellington over the years and it didn't matter who got in that band, he found out what they could do good and then he wrote for them.

Well, jazz is to me, a complete lifestyle. It's bigger than a word. It's a much bigger force than just something that you can say. It's something that you have to feel. It's something that you have to live.

You have to be able to listen. You have got to listen to the singer and give them what they need to sound good.