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

I still continue to do at least four concert tours a year, and in many cases, as many as six.

Amsterdam must have more than a million people. But the only area where jazz is really profitable and successful in an economic sense is in Japan. That's because they haven't been exposed enough.

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.

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.

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