"Of all the musicians I ever loved - Bird and Stan Getz and Miles and lots of others who no one ever knows I've listened to - it was Bud who influenced me the most.
I was fifteen when I first heard Dexter Gordon's recordings with Bud on piano. Then came Bird and Dizzy and the Big Bands - they all influenced me, but Bud more than anyone else.
He was so expressive, such emotion flowed out of him! There are different kinds of emotion - the easy, superficial kind, and another kind, that doesn't make you laugh or cry, that doesn't make you feel anything but a sense of sheer perfection. That's what I felt with Bud.
It's a feeling we sometimes get from Beethoven. It's not that it's beautiful, in the sense of pretty or brilliant, it's something else, something much deeper.
When people talk about giants - Bird, Bud, Dizzy and Miles - I think they underestimate Bud."
Pianist Bill Evans in an interview with Randi Hutlin.