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

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

The real innovators did their innovating by just being themselves.

If a guy is gonna to play good bop, he has to have a sort of a bop soul.

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

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.