It is the great arrogance of the present to forget the intelligence of the past

Good history is a question of survival. Without any past, we will deprive ourselves of the defining impression of our being.

To say that an artist sells out means that an artist is making a conscious choice to compromise his music, to to weaken his music for the sake of commercial gain.

Jazz is a very accurate, curiously accurate accompaniment to 20th century America.

History is malleable. A new cache of diaries can shed new light, and archeological evidence can challenge our popular assumptions.

Louis Armstrong is quite simply the most important person in American music. He is to 20th century music (I did not say jazz) what Einstein is to physics.

The only art form that Americans have created that's recognized around the world is jazz music born in a community that had the peculiar experience of being unfree in a free land.