Even my colleagues don't read classic criticism. And my feeling is that if you don't do that then you're not really practicing your craft. That's how you learn how to do it. You don't learn how to write about jazz just from listening to jazz. You learn how to write by reading the great writers and how they worked, the great music critics.

You've got to have a gimmick if your band sucks.

Charlie Parker was the greatest individual musician that ever lived. Every instrument in the band tried to copy Charlie Parker, and in the history of jazz there had never been one man who influenced all the instruments.

Even my colleagues don't read classic criticism. And my feeling is that if you don't do that then you're not really practicing your craft. That's how you learn how to do it. You don't learn how to write about jazz just from listening to jazz. You learn how to write by reading the great writers and how they worked, the great music critics.

Bing Crosby said that Armstrong is "the beginning and the end of music in America," and he wasn't far wrong.

If you're genuinely candid and expressive then you're never wrong, even when you are wrong.

You're writing for some version of yourself. You're writing the kinds of things that you like to read or wanted to read at a certain point. So, primarily for most of my career, I've written the kind of criticism that fascinates me. The things I discovered the things that get me going, that I'm excited about.