It's hard to get into Newsweek because, as more of our former intellectual magazines take on a pop focus, if there's no buzz, there's no interest.

Coltrane came to New Orleans one day and he was talking about the jazz scene. And Coltrane mentions that the problem with jazz was that there were too few groups.

I gave up my base in popular culture when I left the Tonight Show.

If youre going to use standards as criteria for signing musicians, you can sign thousands. If youre going to use some sort of conceptual interpretation thats based on the tradition of those standards, but is trying to move away from it, youre down to about 10 people or so.

One of the things that I loved about listening to Miles Davis is that Miles always had an instinct for which musicians were great for what situations. He could always pick a band, and that was the thing that separated him from everybody else.

One of the things that's clear to me from interviews that I've read is that the more popular successful jazz musicians had audiences above and beyond the music community.

You know, being America, being the land of "number ones", everyone wants to be a leader before they follow.