'Swing' is an adjective or a verb, not a noun. All jazz musicians should swing. There is no such thing as a 'swing band' in music.

An audience is in many respects no more than a mob under loose control.

It ["Begin the Beguine"] became such a hit that it superseded anything that any band had ever had. It was the first time that a so-called swing band played something melodic and still gave it a beat.

The good old days are neither better nor worse than the ones we're living through right now.

An artist should write for himself & not for an audience. If the audience likes it, great. If not, they can keep away.

I wanted to resign from the planet, not just music. It stopped being fun with success. Money got in the way. Everybody got greedy, including me. Fear set in. I got miserable when I became a commodity.

That's the clarinet I used to use... but it's just a piece of wood, you know, with holes in it and they put these clumsy keys on it and you're supposed to try to take that and manipulate it with throat muscles and chops... and try to make something happen that never happened before. And when you do, you never forget it. It beats sex, it beats anything.