Somebody, my daughter or my wife, gave me a music box for Christmas. It plays "My Funny Valentine" on celeste, you know? So I had Bobby [Irving] just play "Jean Pierre" with the changes on celeste.

[Jazz musicians] feel comfortable with their clichés, you know.

You want to know how I started playing trumpet? My father bought me one, and I studied the trumpet. And everybody I heard that I liked, I picked up things from.

Like Ron Lorman's always sayin', "Na-na-na-na-na," you know what I mean? I don't need that in the studio.

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.

I think every Negro over fifty should get a medal for putting up with all that crap.

I've gotten hernias from drummers when they drop tempo.