The record companies are interested in the kind of sales they can get from the rock groups.

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.

My juices needed restoring. I needed a sabbatical from the record business.

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

In 1958, I decided that I was going to live in Europe permanently. So in 1959 I moved to Lugano, Switzerland.

There are very few groups that really stay together. The leaders of groups make enough money to be able to afford to work a maximum of 35-40 weeks a year.

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.