I was really falling in love with jazz and dedicating myself in that direction.

It's very unlikely you're a genius, but, if you're ready to work at it hard and you want to listen to music all the time and you want to learn about it and you want to be around the people who do it, you'll find your own way.

Bill Charlap and I recorded a tune that Jack [Montrose] wrote and had brought to a date with Bob that was untitled. Bob [Gordon] really loved it and asked if he would mind if they dedicated it to Sue and call it "For Sue."

I left school December of 1988. I was 21 at the time. And I hadn't quite finished my degree because I had done eight semesters, not understanding that I was going to have to finish the degree without the TAPP and Pell grant money that I had been using towards paying for much of my college tuition. And I didn't have any money. So I said, "Alright." And circumstances there were such that I thought it was maybe time to move on anyway.

We were poor [with my mother], and we didn't have too much. So we sat on the floor and we had a record player, and that's all we had in that room in the apartment. But we had whatever we had. Six records and a record player and it seemed like magic. Seven or eight years old, you know.

Everyone wants to do what the great ones do; but very few are willing to do what they did to become great

When I was a kid, I always saw these pictures of a man called Bob Gordon with a baritone saxophone, who I understood was my father. Turns out he wasn't. He was my mother's first husband.