I'm a very, very stubborn man.

There is an apprenticeship system in jazz. You teach the young ones. So even if the musicians weren't personally that likable, they felt an obligation to help the younger musicians.

One of my earliest memories... I knew three full verses of the Star Spangled Banner when I was seven or eight years old. And one of the nuns discovered this phenomenon and I was actually sent around from classroom to classroom to do the whole thing.

If there was ever any truth to the trickle-down theory, the only evidence of it I've ever seen was in that period of 1960 to 1965. All of sudden they were handing out major label recording contracts like they were coming in Cracker Jack boxes.

Most of what I listen to now is mainstream jazz from 1935 right up to and including early bebop and cool jazz.

If you asked anybody in my family, they would have very stridently proclaimed themselves middle class. My mother and father were separated, so he doesn't count.

If I do a piece in my living room, if I practice it - and I have the tapes to prove this - it's not going to be as good as doing the same piece in front of an audience.