Creativity Quote by Wes Montgomery

Montgomery is talking about an instrument, but he is really talking about expectation management - the small theater of walking onstage with gear that already tells the audience what story to hear. An organ rolling into the room reads, to strangers, like a promise of volume and swagger: rock and roll, the era's dominant commercial language. He’s describing a moment when jazz musicians are forced to negotiate with a crowd trained by radio formats and nightclub branding. The organ is a visual cue, a genre signal, a potential misunderstanding before a single note.

The sly twist is that the misunderstanding becomes an opening. "After they hear us play they like it" is both modest and quietly defiant: the band doesn’t need to shout its credentials; it converts people by sound, not category. Montgomery’s ear for audience psychology is practical, not precious.

Then he gets technical in a way that doubles as cultural critique. Guitar "cuts through" because it’s articulate, a melodic scalpel that can claim space in a noisy room. The organ "carries" differently: it’s physical, low-end, breath-and-electricity, "more guts". He’s mapping two kinds of authority - clarity versus mass - and admitting he values both. Underneath is a jazz musician’s constant calculation: how to be heard (literally) without surrendering to what the room thinks it wants.