Lionel Hampton Quotes

I worked hard learning harmony and theory when I was growing up in Chicago in the 1920s.

Playing gives me as much good feeling now as it did when I was a bitty kid.

Seemed to me that drumming was the best way to get close to God.

Man, as long as people want to hear Jazz, I'll give it to them.

Music was our wife and we loved her. We stayed with her, clothed her and put diamond rings on her hands.

Gratitude is when memory is stored in the heart and not in the mind.

It's always Jazz. You can put a new dress on her, a new hat, but no matter what kind of clothes she's the same old broad.

All art is communication of the artists' ideas, sounds, thoughts; without that no one will support the artist.

Every day I look forward to getting with my instruments, trying new things.

I'm motivated. The spirit hits me and I just keep going and don't stop. The more I play, the more I can invent, the more ideas come to me.

Playing is my way of thinking, talking, communicating.