A Quote by Umberto Eco

To play the trumpet, you must train your lips for a long time. When I was twelve or thirteen I was a good player, but I lost the skill and now I play very badly. I do it every day even so. The reason is that I want to return to my childhood. For me, the trumpet is evidence of the sort of young man I was.
Nobody else even approaches the trumpet like [Sweets Edison] does: Never too much and always plenty. He's the greatest trumpet player to play along with singers. He exactly knows how to play with you, how to answer you about what you just sang ... On top of that, he has some great sense of humor, both as a musician and as a man. Every time I see him, I'm laughing so much. Sweets is impeccable and incomparable.
In my opinion, Louis Armstrong is the greatest trumpet stylist of all time and has influenced every trumpet player of his time and long after
I can play anything - piano, drums, guitar, harp - I can even play a trumpet through another trumpet.
For me to want to play the trumpet was a very, very odd thing for my clan as a whole. One of my uncles was a high school principal, and he referred to my trumpet as a bugle, which really hurt me.
Miles Davis came in a couple of days and said, "Oh, man, I love that. Keep going." So he said, "Let me know when you need trumpet." And he came in, and he was sitting there, and I was very intimidated, because now he's going to play the trumpet on something that I wrote." He starts to play, and I go, "That's not right, but I don't know how to tell him it's not right." Finally he goes, "When are you going to tell me what to do?" He said, "This is your music. I know you know how it's supposed to sound. Stop fooling around. We don't have time."
I'm not an amazing trumpet player. It's mostly smoke and mirrors. You shake the trumpet and it starts to vibrate in a ridiculous drunken way, or you flop notes at the right time and you don't have to play stuff that would take seven years to learn.
I hate the natural sound of the trumpet, but I think I'm naturally set up to be a trumpet player. I know that sounds weird. But pretty much anytime I play a note, I'm uncomfortable in a general sense.
I don't just play the trumpet because it's something that resonates with me: I play the trumpet because I realize it's a means to help free a lot of people that ain't free.
Watching a Kirk Douglas movie, 'Young Man With A Horn,' made me want to be a trumpet player.
When you are young and you play football, you must play in the street. When you go to a club at the age of five, and the coach says you must pass this, eat this, drink this... it's not a life. Young people must train for themselves, play football every day, and not have three coaches, with each one saying this and this.
I play a bunch of instruments, like piano, drums, guitar and bass. And the kazoo every now and then. I'm trying to learn how to play the trumpet and the saxophone. That's what I'm learning how to play.
I don't ever want something that I didn't do because I was afraid of it or I didn't think I'd be good at it - within reason. Obviously I'm never going to be able to play the trumpet.
I've always been a music fan. I played trumpet. When I was in 4th grade, we were getting demos from the music teacher about different instruments we could play, and I said I wanted to play the trumpet right away. It was easy: it just had three valves.
I started piano like my sisters. After one year or two, I didn't like it anymore. Then, because I like trumpet, I played the cornet. When you are 7, you can't play trumpet - you play cornet. And something didn't go well. The teacher was too hard. Too rough. Suddenly, there was this instrument, the flute, that I could immediately play.
And my dad wanted me to play the trumpet because that's what he liked. His idol was Louis Armstrong. My dad thought my teeth came together in a way that was perfect for playing the trumpet.
I would never try and play like Harry James, because I don't like his tone - for me. It's just white. You know what I mean? He has what we black trumpet players call a white sound. But it's for white music ... I can tell a white trumpet player, just listening to a record. There'll be something he'll do that'll let me know that he's white.
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