Herbie Mann Quotations

The music we're playing now is based on my heritage, which is Russian, Romanian and Hungarian.

Being selfish to me means that you have to look out for yourself and you don't have to sacrifice.

When you get cancer, it's like really time to look at what your life was and is, and I decided that everything I've done so far is not as important as what I'm going to do now.

Being stubborn has helped, being selfish is not a bad thing.

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.

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.

I always say, if you keep your head in the sand, you don't know where the kick's coming from.

My ego is controlled enough that I don't have to be the focus.

Why do you have to retire at 65? Why can't you start at 70? You know, like wine. Why can't music be that way? My new band, we're playing stuff that's never been done before.

For me Brazilian music is the perfect mix of melody and rhythm. It just bubbles rhythmically. If I had to pick just one music style to play if would be Brazilian.

I recently formed a foundation to raise awareness for prostate cancer. I feel it's very necessary that men be more aware about prostate cancer and their health in general.

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.

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.

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.

You don't have to live the blues to play the blues.

By the time I'm 90, I hope to have it together.

I loved the Brazilian music I played. But this is finally me. For the first time I think it's really me.

I was raised in Brooklyn, and I lived there for 59 years.

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

Music allows the great opportunity to play with people who turned you on and you love.

My father's father came from Russia; my mother came from Romania.

One of the advantages of not having a record contract is that you can make your own mistakes, you don't need somebody else to organize them for you.

To most jazz critics I was basically Kenny G.

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

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.

I was too successful. I made too much money. Alternate fringe audiences liked me too much, so obviously that can't be important.

I've just finished four months of chemotherapy and the chemotherapy worked. I'm officially in remission, which I'm very happy about.

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

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

Let's say you have some chicken stock and you're making soup, and out of everything you can taste, some of the things you put in and some of the things you don't. So you start out with an African spice then you hear some Brazilian music, so then it changes. Then you hear Jamaican and it changes again. And the result depends on how much of each spice you put into it. Now, I've been putting in spices since I started playing professionally in 1945.

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

You know, my mother is 95 and lives alone in Florida. So, you know, I ain't ready to throw in the towel. I still have lots of music that I want to do.