To designate someone a jazz critic and give them a power with the media without the necessary credentials is sheer insanity. They can do serious damage to someone's career. How can you do a technical criticism of an appendectomy if you’re not a doctor? —AHMAD JAMAL [Monk] has written a few attractive tunes, but his lack of technique and continuity prevented him from accomplishing much as a pianist. —Lronaro FestHen This assessment of Thelonious Monk can be found in Feather’ book Inside Bebop. Critics can’t even make music by rubbing their back legs together. —MEL Brooks A musicologist is a man who can read music but can’t hear it. —Sir THomas BEECHAM Definition of rock journalism: People who can’t write, doing interviews with people who can’t think, in order to prepare articles for people who can’t read. —FRANK ZAPPA, AS TOLD BY TODD ELDERI know only two tunes. One of them is “Yankee Doodle,” and the other isn’t. —Utysses $. Grant I just played into it. Thad a kind of jazz vibrato, but I just played. Later it struck me that ¥ would like to know what the hell I'm doing. — Benny GOODMAN, REFERRING TO HIS 1938 RECORDING OF Mozart’s CLARINET QUINTET Goodman then went on to study the classical repertoire and in 1940 recorded Mozart's Clarinet Concerto. I remember one day being in a music history class and a white woman was the teacher. She was . . . saying that the reason black people played the blues was because they were poor and had to pick cotton. In response to that comment, I said, “I'm from East St. Louis, and my father is rich, he’s a dentist, and I play the blues. My father never picked no cotton, and I didn’t wake up this morning sad and start playing the blues. There’s more to it than that.” Mites Davis, To Quincy TROUPELEW FIELDS: Ladies don’t write lyrics. DOROTHY FIELDS: I’m no lady, I’m your daughter. Mine was the kind of piece in which nobody knew what was going on, including the composer, the conductor, and the critics. Consequently I got pretty good reviews. —Oscar LevANT I don’t know anything about music. In my line, you don’t have to. —ELvis PRESLEY I know nothing at all about music. —RicHarp WAGNER