A phoenix ain't nuthin' but a burd.

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.

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

Pass that thing, slightly, lightly and politely.

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

Everybody came. Everybody came to the Cotton Club.

You don't think it was because a white man wrote it, a black man wrote it, a green man wrote it. What-doesn't make a difference!