Here's an interesting quote from Santana:
"Everybody had sheets of paper to read-like an accordion, pages and pages," he said. "Louis Armstrong just had his handkerchief and his trumpet. And somebody said, `Yeah, Louis, if you don't read music, how do you know where you are? How do you know when to play and what to play?' He said, `Look man, I close my eyes, and I see the notes hanging from a tree. The ones that are most ripe, those are the ones that I choose to play. The juicy ones.' "People who read have an advantage over people who don't, but it's better to read life than to read the paper," he concludes. "That's my analogy. I'm not saying ignorance is bliss. Actually, if you don't read music, that doesn't make you ignorant. Birds don't read. Birds can go out there and they'll still have a song in the morning.
"Imagination is the best thing. Close your eyes or do whatever you can to hear the inner world music. Read that. A lot of times, you can read the paper [music], and it will sound stiff. I admire people like Wayne [Shorter] and Miles; they can read, but they read beyond the paper. That's what I'm talking about."