I do not claim any of the creation of the blues, although I have written many of them even before Mr. Handy had any blues published. I heard them when I was knee-high to a duck.

You can't make jazz without using certain elements of Latin music.

My contributions were many: First clown director, with witty sayings and flashily dressed, now called master of ceremonies.

I have been robbed of three million dollars all told. Everyone today is playing my stuff and I don't even get credit. Kansas City style, Chicago style, New Orleans style hell, they're all Jelly Roll style.

In the year of 1902, when I was about seventeen years old, I happened to invade one of the sections [in New Orleans] where the birth of Jazz originated from.

The sporting houses needed professors, and we had so many different styles that... it wouldn't make any difference that you just came from . . . whatever your tunes were over there, we played them in New Orleans.

Rejoice at the death and cry at the birth: New Orleans sticks close to the Scriptures.