Freddie Green has been my right arm for thirty years. And if he leaves the band one day, I'll probably leave with him.

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

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 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'll always remember when I first heard Lester [Young]. I'd never heard anyone like him before. He was a stylist with a different sound. A sound I'd never heard before or since. To be honest with you, I didn't much like it at first.

The real innovators did their innovating by just being themselves.