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.

You can't play anything on a horn that Louis Armstrong hasn't played

I've come close to matching the feeling of that night in 1944 in music, when I first heard Diz and Bird, but I've never got there. . . . I'm always looking for it, listening and feeling for it, though, trying to always feel it in and through the music I play everyday.

Maybe you play a melody twice. You play it once like you like it, and some parts that you don't like you can just switch. An eight-bar motive - you can just take it and put it in the front or back or something like that. It can save you 50 or 60 or 70,000 dollars, a drum machine. That's why everybody uses it.

[Prince] could very well be the Duke Ellington of Rock 'n' Roll.

You can't compete with Sweets' sound and time feel. It's impossible.

My father's rich, my momma's good looking. Right? And I can play the Blues. I've never suffered and don't intend to suffer.