He was a silly guy. Out - do the other guy. That was his effort at all times.

We usually never got out of there before four or five o'clock in the morning. Every morning. So it was rough.

Everybody came. Everybody came to the Cotton Club.

People sometimes forget that jazz was built not only in the minds of the great ones but on the backs of the ordinary ones — ordinary musicians.

I think it was just an opera. Now, you go to opera, you expect to see and hear what the opera is. So, it was Catfish Row. It was singers. Marvelous voices. It didn't make no difference what color they were

A movie and a stage show are two entirely different things. A picture, you can do anything you want. Change it, cut out a scene, put in a scene, take a scene out. They don't do that on stage

He was a silly guy. Out - do the other guy. That was his effort at all times.