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.

I'm an exhibitionist, I was an exhibitionist as a kid.

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.

I cut myself off from the mainstream of jazz. It stood me in good stead later on, as a musician.

When you're working in front of an audience, you have incentive to excel.

In the early 1970s. 1971, '72. The rooms were closing down, record labels weren't signing acoustic acts any more. Although they had been pretty much been getting out of that for some time before that.

I think I have more in common with a carpenter than you might think. We're putting things together.