I spent a lot of time teaching myself theory and harmony so I could be free to express myself on the instrument.

People who love jazz musicians love us when we play what we want to play and we're starving. But as soon as you commercialize your sound like Wes Montgomery did, the jazz fans and the critics are down on you!

As my career has progressed, I've had the pleasure of playing with the baddest jazz cats on the planet. But that doesn't change my desire to entertain folks. That's really who I am.

The greatest guitar player in the world today for me is Paco de Lucia, who is actually Spanish.

Of course we've lost so many superstars who've made jazz what it is. We've lost so many musicians who created new things and changed the way we think about music and who took jazz to a new level. So jazz is suffering from that. But we still have a lot of incredible people playing jazz in the world. We have a lot of people leading the way.

No matter what they take from me, they can't take away my dignity.

My whole career from the early 70s on has been mind-blowing. I didn't imagine in my life that I would ever be considered a guitar player first of all because I started off as a singer.