If I were to put on Barbra Streisand and Duke Ellington, one might say the combination isn't good.

At Verve, my bookkeeper would invariably say, 'Well, why do you want to put out Roy Eldridge?' Or 'Why do you want to put out Ben Webster? They don't sell.' And I'd say, 'Well, whether they sell or not, they're important, they should be recorded and they're what Verve stands for, so we don't have to discuss that any further.

I don't think that jazz, as any kind of an art form, has any permanence attached to it, apart from the practitioners of it.

Jazz is America's own. It is played and listened to by all peoples - in harmony together. Pigmentation differences have no place... as in genuine democracy, only performance counts.

To play today in London, next week in Madrid and the week after that in Warsaw is a bit better than playing Newark and Baltimore and Philadelphia. I've been doing that for 20 years.

If you don't get substantially what you want, be ready to walk. And don't look back.

I'm concerned with trend. I don't know where jazz fans will come from 20 years from now.