Herbie Mann Quotes

Think about it: Look at the strides of awareness and treatment and tests that women have had with breast cancer, that the gay community has had with AIDS, because they’re active and they talk about it.

Music allows the great opportunity to play with people you love.

But when I first got cancer, after the initial shock and the fear and paranoia and crying and all that goes with cancer – that word means to most people ultimate death – I decided to see what I could do to take that negative and use it in a positive way.

As much as I think John Coltrane belongs on the list, I think without Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young, both of whom defined improvising on the tenor sax, there would not have been the evolution of the craft by John Coltrane.

If you want to play somebody’s music, you’d better go into his house.

My youngest son, who is now the drummer in my band, lives in Brooklyn. My oldest son is about to move out to California, and my daughters are both out of town.

The reality is that what you find out is that your head is the medicine. If your head is not in the right place and you don’t think positively, all the medicine technology in the world is not going to work.

If you’re in jazz and more than ten people like you, you’re labeled commercial.

I had sat in one day in Central Park with Bonnie and Delaney, and Duane was playing with them, so I asked if he wanted to work on an album. You never had to say to him how to play the guitar.

What I try to do is produce an atmosphere where musicians want to invest in what they do and give to the recording. I hire those musicians who I know will play something creative and interesting.

If you keep your head in the sand, you don’t know where the kick’s coming from.

You have to be concerned with yourself because if you’re not on it all the time, nobody else is going to be.