Nat Towles Quotes

"You'd march on the graveyard playing very solemn and very slow, then on the way back all hell would break loose! No music, you understand, we didn't know what a sheet of music was. Just six or seven pieces, half a dozen men pounding it out all together, each in his own way and yet somehow fitting in all right with the others. It had to be right, and it was, because it came from the right place." - Nat Towles (on funeral bands in New Orleans)

source: 'Hear Me Talkin' to Ya: The Story of Jazz As Told by the Men Who Made It' (Nat Shapiro, First published 1966)