I don't dig that two-beat jive the New Orleans cats play. My boys and I have to have four heavy beats to the bar and no cheating.

All I wanted was to be big, to be in show business and to travel ... and that's what I've been doing all my life.

Of course, there are a lot of ways you can treat the blues, but it will still be the blues.

I never thought innovation as such was very important. Not when you have to think about it... If you're going to come up with a new direction or a really new way to do something, you'll do it by just playing your stuff and letting it ride. The real innovators did their innovating by just being themselves.

I don't dig that two-beat jive the New Orleans cats play. My boys and I have to have four heavy beats to the bar and no cheating.

I think the band can really swing when it swings easy, when it can just play along like you are cutting butter.

I got everything I wanted. When I was young in Kansas City, I knew nothing about Frank Sinatra, Billy Eckstine, Ella Fitzgerald, of all those concert halls, of all those countries. I did not know what it was like to direct a band... All I wanted was to be big, to be in show-business, and to travel...and that's what I've been doing all my life.