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.

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

Everybody that you could name would join in our audiences from, Laguardia on down. Everybody came. Everybody came to the Cotton Club.

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

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 phoenix ain't nuthin' but a burd.

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