Essentially, the popular musician in America must learn that his basic job is to entertain people, to make them forget their sorrows for a moment or two; in the same sense that any popular art form must aim at the same distraction value. Any such job as that is basically a young man's business. It takes a young man's energy to go traveling around the country, night after night in a different place, prancing and cavorting around in front of mobs of people all out to try to forget their problems for an evening. And for a young man it can be a good enough way of life, if he happens to like it.

Somebody asked me once, 'Do you think that swing will ever come back?' And I said, 'Do you think the 1938 Ford will ever come back?'

An entertainer pleases others while an artist only has to please himself.

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

If you wanna dance, a windshield wiper'll do it-all you need is a beat.

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

Listening to Benny [Goodman] talk about the clarinet was like listening to a surgeon get hung up on a scalpel.