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.

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!

Pass that thing, slightly, lightly and politely.

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

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

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

Everybody did something. It was very entertaining. We had a lot of fun. Lot of fun. And there was no segregation, that I could see. I never saw any