Bill Dixon People Quotations

While everyone has a right to his or her opinion, the people who are informed have more of a right.

I think people who sample are cheating. It is like people who do collages. Use all of your own stuff.

Interested listeners have only to hear the recording to find out if those guys, who go to such pains to undervalue my work, are right. All people have to do is listen to realize it is a beautiful record.

My career has been different from most people, but I knew what I was not going to do. I knew I was not going to be controlled. I knew there was a price for this, but I did not know there was as large a price as it turned out to be.

If, when making reference to a larger musical grouping, you say orchestra, you can readily expect that they will seek to correct you and let you know that it's really a big band. Continued insistence over the years has only served to make those people think you are being pedantic.

In certain areas of this music, especially since the 1960s - and that is no coincidence - certain people have been singled out for attention and the others have been totally ignored to the extent that the interested music public has been made to believe that they no longer exist.

The next Charlie Parker is out there somewhere. He is not in one of these schools. He is not getting any of these grants. This music desperately needs to be subsidized so that the people who are trying to do something and have no access can have access to something. I was on one of the National Endowment Panels some years ago and it was an eye-opener to actually witness the selection process in operation.

I am not interested in petty gossip; I am not interested in who sells the most records and the politicizing of economics that makes that possible. I am not interested in a body politic of the largely uninformed who attempt to politically designate certain people as deserving of wider recognition.