Creativity Quote by Jerome Richardson

There’s a special kind of honesty in a musician admitting they chased the wrong sound for a while. Jerome Richardson isn’t romanticizing the struggle; he’s describing it like a practical epiphany, the kind you only get after you’ve forced yourself to be someone else onstage. The tenor, in jazz mythology, carries a certain swagger and authority. It’s the “main character” horn in a lot of listeners’ imaginations. Richardson’s line quietly punctures that prestige. Whatever he was “trying to get out of a tenor” wasn’t just tone; it was identity, permission, maybe even a seat in a lineage that rewards bigness.

Then comes the punch: he picks up the alto and talks to it like a person he abandoned. “Where have you been?” reads as self-reproach disguised as comedy. The horn didn’t move; he did. That’s the subtext: the voice you’re hunting is often the one you’ve been ignoring because it feels less legible to the crowd or less aligned with your idea of greatness.

“I said right here for now on!” lands with the rhythm of a bandstand declaration, not a diary confession. It’s commitment spoken out loud so it becomes real. In the mid-century jazz world Richardson came up in, doubling on multiple horns was common, but the culture still pressures you to be definitive. This quote works because it frames artistic maturation not as triumph but as recognition: stop auditioning for other people’s expectations and return, almost sheepishly, to what fits your breath.