Jazz is an Uncle Tom word. They should stop using that word for selling. I told George Wein the other day that he should stop using it.

If you got up on the bandstand at Minton's and couldn't play, you were not only going to be embarrassed by the people ignoring you or booing you, you might get your ass kicked.

I put all those synthesizer sounds behind "Decoy" and "Code M.D." A lot of things we write together. A lot of things are his, but they don't have that thing I want on the bottom. I often tell him, I say, "Bobby [Irving], if there's a melody, there's another one somewhere that goes with it."

Audiences - they like colour, you know. I can go out there wearing a red suit, man, and they'll say I'm out of sight ... I think they should be educated; you should always drop something on an audience ... When you get in front of an audience, you should try to give 'em something. After all, they're there looking at you like this. You can't go out and give 'em nothing.

They [police] do me like that all the time! "What you work for?".

If you make a suggestion and [musicians] don't know what you mean, you have to be able to do it yourself. I often sit down on drums and show 'em just exactly what I want. And I do it and then say, "How do you do that?" It's because I know how it looks, I know what I want to hear, and I don't drop or rush any tempo. It ain't in my body, it ain't in my nephew's body.

Music is an addiction.