Wes Montgomery Quotes

• I never practice my guitar. From time to time I just open the case & throw in a piece of raw meat.

  Wes Montgomery

  Funny, Music, Guitar

  107 Copy quote

• Regardless of what you play, the biggest thing is keeping the feel going.

  Wes Montgomery

  Music, Play, African American

  70 Copy quote

• I don't know that many chords. I'd be loaded if I knew that many. But that's not my aim. My aim is to move from one vein to the other without any trouble. The biggest thing to me is keeping a feeling, regardless what you play. So many cats lose their feeling at various times, not through the whole tune, but at various times, and it causes them to have to build up and drop down, and you can feel it.

  Wes Montgomery

  Moving, Cat, Play

  49 Copy quote

• If a jazz player is really playing, the classical player will have to respect him.

  Wes Montgomery

  Player, Jazz, Ifs

  44 Copy quote

• It's impossible for me to feel like there's only one way to do a thing. There's nothing wrong with having one way of doing it, but I think it's a bad habit. I believe in range. Like, there's a lot of tunes that I play all the time-sometimes I hear 'em in a different register. And if you don't have complete freedom, or you won't let yourself get away from that one straight line, oh, my goodness, that's too horrible to even think about.

  Wes Montgomery

  Believe, Thinking, Play

  41 Copy quote

• When I got pretty good I went on the road with a group. We starved.

  Wes Montgomery

  Music, Groups, Jazz

  19 Copy quote

• To me, all guitar players can play, because I know they're getting to where they're at. It's a very hard instrument to accept, because it takes years to start working with it, that's first, and it looks like everybody else is moving on the instrument but you. Then when you find a cat that's really playing, you always find that he's been playing a long time, you can't get around it.

  Wes Montgomery

  Moving, Cat, Player

  21 Copy quote

• You know, John Coltrane has been sort of a god to me. Seems like, in a way, he didn't get the inspiration out of other musicians. He had it. When you hear a cat do a thing like that, you got to go along with him. I think I heard Coltrane before I really got close to Miles [Davis]. Miles had a tricky way of playing his horn that I didn't understand as much as I did Coltrane. I really didn't understand what Coltrane was doing, but it was so exciting the thing that he was doing.

  Wes Montgomery

  Inspiration, Cat, Thinking

  Downbeat magazine Interview, 1961.

  26 Copy quote

• I don't know whether it was his (Charlie Christian's) melodic lines, his sound or his approach, but I hadn't heard anything like that before. He sounded so good and it sounded so easy, so I bought me a guitar and an amplifier and said now I can't do nothing but play! Really, welding was my talent, I think, but I sort of swished it aside.

  Wes Montgomery

  Music, Christian, Thinking

  14 Copy quote

• I got a standard box. I don't never want nothing special. Then if I drop my box, I can borrow somebody else's.

  Wes Montgomery

  Music, Special, Want

  10 Copy quote

• Playing octaves was just a coincidence. And it's still such a challenge, like chord versions, block chords like cats play on piano. There are a lot of things that can be done with it, but each is a field of its own. I used to have headaches every time I played octaves, because it was extra strain, but the minute I'd quit I'd be all right. But now I don't have headaches when I play octaves.

  Wes Montgomery

  Block, Cat, Play

  15 Copy quote

• I've really gone into business since I got the 6 string, which was like starting all over.

  Wes Montgomery

  Starting Over, Gone, Jazz

  17 Copy quote

• Well, I got pretty good and went on the road with a group. We starved. At that time I didn't realize that you'd work one gig in Kansas City, the next in Florida and the next gig will be in Louisville. You know, a thousand miles a night. That was really rough, man.

  Wes Montgomery

  Night, Men, Kansas

  15 Copy quote

• A lot of places we go, when they see the organ coming in, they're expecting rock and roll, but after they hear us play they like it. To me, guitar cuts through-it carries more than organ. But organ has got more guts.

  Wes Montgomery

  Cutting, Rocks, Guitar

  14 Copy quote

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