Walter Beasley is an anomaly: a successful performing musician who possesses the rare skill of understanding the musical process beyond the intuitive. This special ability enables Walter to communicate with aspiring musicians in a way that removes the sense of mystery that sometimes enshrouds our profession.

I think that if you keep banging at the door all you need is a little foothold, a little tiny foothold, and then the rest will take care of itself.

Coltrane came to New Orleans one day and he was talking about the jazz scene. And Coltrane mentions that the problem with jazz was that there were too few groups.

Pop doesn't really look back. It can't. What makes pop work is simplicity.

If you listen to a lot of the songs that are popular now, there's very little melody in there. People love the beat. But to musicians, it's melody, because we understand how elusive it is and how hard it is to hold.

The biggest problem with American music right now, is that kids don't listen. They come by it honestly, Americans don't listen anyway. When people go to concerts, they say I'm going to see... not, I'm going to hear.

There's not one Tin Pan Alley song on my record.