You run into a party and [a] woman comes up to you. She's the most beautiful creature you ever saw - Ava Gardner - and says, "I like you and why don't we get together?" What are you going to say, "No"? You'd have to be an idiot. She was an incredible creature.

You have no idea of the women I didn't marry.

Dance music-as I keep saying, you can dance to a windshield wiper... a windshield wiper that's fairly steady gives you a beat and all you need is an out-of-tune playing 'Melancholy Baby' and you've got dance music.

The bandleader is a musician trying to sell a mass commodity; and in order to do so successfully he must accommodate himself to mass standards. Unless he can do this comfortably, sooner or later he is sunk.

I did all you can do with a clarinet. Any more would have been less.

I like the music. I love it & live it in fact. But for me the business part of music just plain stinks.

I was really running a music school back then, because my band wasn't making any money. I keep talking about money, because most people don't understand the part of money in running a band.