I never heard my music played the way I heard it in my head.

I never heard my music played the way I heard it in my head.

Making the complicated simple is true creativity.

Most customers, by the time the musicians reach the second set, are to some extent inebriated. They don't care what you play anyway.

Jazz is the language of the emotions.

I was born swinging and clapped my hands in church as a little boy, but I've grown up and I like to do things other than just swing. But blues can do more than just swing.

I, myself, came to enjoy the players who didn't only just swing but who invented new rhythmic patterns, along with new melodic concepts. And those people are: Art Tatum, Bud Powell, Max Roach, Sonny Rollins, Lester Young, Dizzy Gillespie and Charles Parker, who is the greatest genius of all to me because he changed the whole era around.