All my inspiration comes from Ahmad Jamal.

John Lee Hooker is the funkiest man alive

In high school I was best in music class on the trumpet, but the prizes went to the boys with blue eyes. I made up my mind to outdo anybody white on my horn.

If I hear a song like "Time After Time." I'm sittin' there lookin' at video and Cindy Lauper comes on singin' this song. I said, "God damnnnnn!"

A lot of people ask me where music is going today. I think it's going in short phrases. If you listen, anybody with an ear can hear that. Music is always changing. It changes because of the times and the technology that's available, the material that things are made of, like plastic cars instead of steel. So when you hear an accident today it sounds different, not all the metal colliding like it was in the forties and fifties. Musicians pick up sounds and incorporate that into their playing, so the music that they make will be different.

If you have a tone like mine that is recognizable. No matter what I play, when you hear my tone you can tell it's me.

When I went in there, we used drum machine on "Time After Time" and "Human Nature".We don't use the drum machine to play a pattern. You play the pattern by being consistent.