Dave Van Ronk Quotes & Sayings (Page 2)

“One of my earliest memories... I knew three full verses of the Star Spangled Banner when I was seven or eight years old. And one of the nuns discovered this phenomenon and I was actually sent around from classroom to classroom to do the whole thing.”

“I think I have more in common with a carpenter than you might think. We're putting things together.”

“By the mid-70s, I wanted to get out of the business. I was tired anyway.”

“Most of what I listen to now is mainstream jazz from 1935 right up to and including early bebop and cool jazz.”

“My uncle and my grandfather both worked in the Brooklyn Navy Yard.”

“I cut myself off from the mainstream of jazz. It stood me in good stead later on, as a musician.”

“I don't think I went a year or so without a record between 1959 and 1979, sometimes two.”

“I'm an exhibitionist, I was an exhibitionist as a kid.”

“If I do a piece in my living room, if I practice it - and I have the tapes to prove this - it's not going to be as good as doing the same piece in front of an audience.”

“If you asked anybody in my family, they would have very stridently proclaimed themselves middle class. My mother and father were separated, so he doesn't count.”