A Quote by Ray Stevens

Bill Justis was a saxophone player, good musician, arranger, and friend of mine who had a big hit called 'Raunchy.' — © Ray Stevens
Bill Justis was a saxophone player, good musician, arranger, and friend of mine who had a big hit called 'Raunchy.'
Bill Justis was a saxophone player, good musician, arranger, and friend of mine who had a big hit called Raunchy.
The time I spent working in the wild west show in Paris had a pretty big impact on me. A friend of mine had hooked me up with the gig over there and I literally left Texas with a hundred dollar bill in my pocket and one way plane ticket to Paris.
Chelsea Handler is a good friend of mine, and I always was inspired by the fact that she was taking her life and turning it into these ridiculous, raunchy memoirs. She really has a talent, and she's a great writer. I was inspired by her trajectory.
I had a really nice association with Richie DeRosa, a great musician, a great drummer and composer and arranger. And I had a number of classes with him.
When I was young, I never bought records because my brother Joseph played saxophone and had a record player. I loved listening to his records: The Dorsey Brothers, Duke Ellington, all the big American jazz bands, and vocalists like Ella Fitzgerald, Ernestine Anderson, and Kitty White, a singer from the US who was a friend of Nina Simone. Nobody in America seems to know about her, but she was quite popular in South Africa.
As a musician and a guitar player, I can noodle as well as anybody. But from my background as a session musician, I always try to play what is called for by the lyric and listening to the song. As a writer, that's what I do, too.
My dad would take me downtown, and I'd stand backstage and watch him in the vaudeville pit band. I was 6 or 7. He was a musician, a band leader, a wonderful clarinetist and saxophone player.
A good friend of mine took me out and had me hit off a tee. He made me understand what was my strike zone and - with my speed - the importance of making contact. So I give him a lot of credit for changing my game and making me the player I became. He showed me how to work on me and my game, and not worry about patterning myself after someone else and focusing on what they were capable of doing rather than what I was capable of doing.
I never wanted all this hoopla. All I wanted was to be a good ball player and hit twenty-five or thirty homers, drive in a hundred runs, hit .280 and help my club win pennants. I just wanted to be one of the guys, an average player having a good season.
We don't feel pressure of, 'Let's make this really raunchy.' It's more about making a good story, which is 10 times harder. The raunchy stuff's really easy for us.
My father, Kali Gannguli, is an arranger, composer and accordion player who has worked with Salilda whose songs I had grown up hearing.
Playing in the Champions League is a big dream of mine. When you are a player and have a chance to play in it, it's a good thing.
Any saxophone player will have those influences come through in their music in a very different way. I can listen to the same 10 sax players as someone else for my entire life, and we'll both play completely differently. That's the beauty of being a musician.
On 'Cardamom,' I had pretty much total control on all of the musical stuff, but I asked a friend of mine to take the picture for the cover, and I asked a friend of mine to draw the back.
A small olive-skinned creature who had hit puberty but never hit it very hard, Ben had been my best friend since fifth grade, when we both finally owned up to the fact that neither of us was likely to attract anyone else as a best friend.
I know I’m an African-American, and I know I play the saxophone, but I’m not a jazz musician. I’m not a classical musician, either. My music is like my life: It’s in between these areas.
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