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There are a lot of people that impacted me. I remember hearing Oscar Peterson live at the Blue Note, which was very expensive, but... $50 in the '80s... hard to come up with. But it was amazing.

Jon Gordon

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Jon Gordon
Age: 53
Born: 1971
Born: January 20
Businessperson
Consultant
Writer
Come
Note
Hard
Expensive
People
Notes
Hearing
Amazing
Peterson
Blue
Impacted
Remember
Oscar
Live
Oscars

More quotes by Jon Gordon

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Phil [Wood] was known for having a little bit of a gruff manner, but he was all heart.
Jon Gordon
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I was studying with Joe Allard, which was great, as a saxophone student. Being able to study with Joe Allard was an incredible experience.
Jon Gordon
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I was occasionally getting calls for some things. But I would say, 22 to 29 was a lot of scuffling. Hoping to get called for bad wedding gigs and I did do an off-Broadway show for about 15 months.
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Sometimes you think Okay, well I'm going to play my horn, and I'm going to study Charlie Bird Parker solos or [John Coltrain] or whatever. But as [Phil Wood] said to me, Man, Bird listened to everything.
Jon Gordon
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I was really falling in love with jazz and dedicating myself in that direction.
Jon Gordon
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I was also sitting in from the middle of senior year of high school at Sweet Basil, it was a great club in New York.
Jon Gordon
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Your optimism today will determine your level of success tomorrow.
Jon Gordon
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I definitely had some moments, where, Wow, these were some hard chords on some gig.
Jon Gordon
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Walk down Forest Ave to Joey's Pizza like we used to do after performances, which doesn't exist anymore. We had a sense of community [in the school band].
Jon Gordon
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When [Charlie Parker] saw the young guys, especially the ones that were scuffling... Did you eat today? And if you hadn't eaten, he'd take you and buy you some lunch.
Jon Gordon
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Great leaders don't succeed because they are great. They succeed because they bring out the greatness in others.
Jon Gordon
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A guy like Scott [Robinson] plays the whole history of music on every instrument you've ever heard of. He's just kind of an unparalleled genius.
Jon Gordon
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You can’t be a great leader if all you are serving is yourself.
Jon Gordon
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When you experience resistance, you find the lessons that you are meant to learn
Jon Gordon
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The goal is not to be better than anyone else but rather be better than you were yesterday.
Jon Gordon
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Negative people often tend to create negative cultures whereas positive corporate cultures are created by positive people.
Jon Gordon
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We were poor [with my mother], and we didn't have too much. So we sat on the floor and we had a record player, and that's all we had in that room in the apartment. But we had whatever we had. Six records and a record player and it seemed like magic. Seven or eight years old, you know.
Jon Gordon
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Phil [Wood] was very passionate. Very committed. He felt very blessed that the people that cared about him and took him aside... if he was out of line or drinking too much, being too surly.
Jon Gordon
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I saw a nice interview with Dave Binney recently. He was saying, Man it was never easy. It's not like 'Oh wow, the good old days.' What, when certain people couldn't vote? There was more work for musicians in the '40s, '50s, '60s. But I don't think it was ever easy.
Jon Gordon
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If you go with that spirit, good things will come for you. If you go into it with an assumption that you're a genius and that you're entitled to something, it's a little tougher.
Jon Gordon