"Woody Shaw is one of the voices of the future...not of the future, of the present! He has something that's different, something unique to offer. He's the guy who makes people say:
'Hey, look out, look out; here it comes!' "

"Now there's a great trumpet player. He can play different from all of them!"

"He was truly one of the greatest!. I first had occasion to work with Woody on a trip to Iran. One of the most amazing things was his uncanny memory. I was just flabbergasted!. After one look, he knew all of the charts, no matter how complex they were."

"I really admired and respected Woody Shaw's playing.... he was one of our finest young Jazz trumpeters."

"Woody Shaw is full of beautiful fire, drive, imagination, and harmonic knowledge.
I like him better than any other young trumpeter."

"The thing about Woods is that he's done his homework. He's hip to Louis Armstrong, plays intervals, and runs backwards so to speak. He breaks it down, plays atonal, and then comes back and plays real trumpet. Woods covers the whole spectrum!"

"I first met Woody at some jam sessions at Juilliard around 1960 - I had just moved to New York. It was so inspiring to hear some "young guys" playing so great and inventive. This was my generation and the excitement was high.

Woody was the finest of the young trumpeters - and although he learned from the great trumpeters just prior - like Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, and Clifford Brown - he always, from the start, had a completely distinctive sound of his own. Woody contributed to my 1st 2 albums as a leader: "Tones For Joan's Bones" and "Is". He added that great enthusiastic and creative sound to that music and I'm very proud to have played with Woody and have known him."

"Woody added to the vocabulary of the trumpet. He had a real concept about the organization of group music that often utilized many different and complex harmonic progressions. He was very serious, disciplined and respectful towards jazz. His whole approach influenced me tremendously."

"I have a lot of tunes for Woody. I have a tune on Black Hope which is called "Run Run Shaw." There is a tune on Happy People called "A Hole in One," written for Tiger Woods, but in the back of my mind, I am always thinking of Woody Shaw. His influence and his presence is always in my music somehow. Woody Shaw, I think in the community, people definitely knew about him. When I first got to New York and I started hearing Woody Shaw, I was roommates with Mulgrew Miller and Tony Reedus, who were playing in his band. I got a chance to hear him a lot more probably than other people.

The thing that I liked about Woody was that he came from Freddie (Hubbard), but he also, at some point, started to develop his own thing. To me, not only that, he was coming from Trane too. When I think of Woody Shaw, I think of John Coltrane. Harmonically, I think of John Coltrane. It gave me a chance to hear music differently and it was definitely at one of his peaks in his musical career. For me, I really got a chance to hear Woody and to hear him play nights where no one heard him. I have tapes of him when I was screaming, he was playing so much trumpet and then I had an opportunity to play with Woody Shaw and Freddie Hubbard on the "Double Take" CDs and that was beautiful too. Even though I love Freddie Hubbard, Woody, just harmonically, he was playing what I wanted to hear at that point."
(From "A Fireside Chat with Kenny Garrett," Jazzweekly, Fred Jung)

"Woody was one of the most imaginative and creative musicians I've had the privilege of being around. He was also one of the youngest and perhaps one of the last great conceptualists that came in the wake of John Coltrane and Miles Davis. In Woody's band, we dealt with so many different ways and different styles of playing; modal, free, way-out, standards and bebop. It was quite an experience to be around somebody who found new ways of playing all those kinds of music, and with new concepts."

"One of the greatest Jazz musicians of all time..."

" I still listen to Miles a lot... Freddie Hubbard, Bird, and Woody Shaw... I think Woody was really my guy."