You hear about the Duke Ellingtons, the Jimmie Luncefords, and the Fletcher Hendersons, but people sometimes forget that jazz was not only built in the minds of the great ones, but on the backs of the ordinary ones.

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

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

And then there's my Grandson: He's certainly got the music together, there's just no question about it.

A phoenix ain't nuthin' but a burd.

It's very difficult to photograph an opera. And they messed up on it. It just wasn't there. And I don't blame the Gershwins for taking it away. Of course, if they had gotten the original company to have done it, it would have been very good

What opera isn't violent? Two things happen, violence and love. And other than that, name something else. You can't