Oscar Peterson Quotes

#1. 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.

Oscar Peterson

#2. 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.

Oscar Peterson

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

Oscar Peterson

#4. I don't believe that a lot of the things I hear on the air today are going to be played for as long a time as Coleman Hawkins records or Brahms concertos.

Oscar Peterson

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

Oscar Peterson

#6. If you have something to say of any worth then people will listen to you.

Oscar Peterson

#7. Too many jazz pianists limit themselves to a personal style, a trademark, so to speak. They confine themselves to one type of playing.

Oscar Peterson

#8. He's not a performer, he's not a composer, he's not even a musician, but Norman Granz is Mr. Jazz.

Oscar Peterson

#9. 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.

Oscar Peterson

#10. You not only have to know your own instrument, you must know the others and how to back them up at all times. That's jazz.

Oscar Peterson

#11. I believe in using the entire piano as a single instrument capable of expressing every possible musical idea.

Oscar Peterson

#12. I am the worlds laziest writer.

Oscar Peterson

#13. 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.

Oscar Peterson

#14. Louie Bellson represents the epitome of musical talent. His ability to cover the whole musical spectrum from an elite percussionist to a very gifted composer and arranger never ceases to amaze me. I consider him one of the musical giants of our age.

Oscar Peterson

#15. 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.

Oscar Peterson

#16. 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.

Oscar Peterson

#17. It's the group sound that's important, even when you're playing a solo.

Oscar Peterson

#18. I play as I feel.

Oscar Peterson

#19. I have no one style.

Oscar Peterson

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

Oscar Peterson

#21. I despair about the lack of proper respect shown for the piano. If you want it to sound like a traffic jam, go out in the street and forget the piano. That's not a piano sound.

Oscar Peterson