Creativity Quote by Marian McPartland

The sly power of Marian McPartland dropping “By the way” before “I got a Grammy” is that it treats a career-capping accolade like a casual aside, the way a real musician might mention a good piano in the corner. The phrase isn’t false modesty; it’s a worldview. In jazz, especially in McPartland’s era, legitimacy was earned night after night in clubs, studios, and bandstands, not conferred by televised trophies. So the Grammy lands here as an afterthought - a “big thrill,” yes, but pointedly not a defining one.

That tonal choice carries subtext about who gets canonized and when. McPartland came up in a scene where women instrumentalists were often treated as novelties, where the serious work could be overlooked while the spectacle got attention. Her understatement reads like a quiet rebuttal: I’ve done the work regardless; the institution just caught up. It’s also generational. For artists who built their identities before the modern awards economy, public validation is pleasant but not central to the craft.

Context matters: McPartland wasn’t only a formidable pianist; she was a curator of the music’s memory through radio, interviewing and playing with an enormous range of artists. That long, service-oriented arc makes the Grammy feel less like a coronation than a polite nod from the mainstream to someone who’d already been doing the job of cultural preservation for decades. The thrill is real. The shrug is the point.