I used to enjoy all the white bands when I was a kid listening to the radio. But the record companies, they take music and label it - like, they say "rock". Because the white singers can't sound like James Brown, they call him "soul". They've been doing that for years. That's the prejudice crap.

Joao Gilberto on guitar could read a newspaper and sound good.

As long as I've been playing, they never say I done anything. They always say that some white guy did it.

Everybody ought to listen to Benny [Carter]. He's a whole musical education.

We don't play to be seen. I'm addicted to music, not audiences.

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."

The only reason to write a new song is because you're tired of the old ones.