Ellington is a writer and arranger, as well as a musician and leader. He does movie sound tracks.

I made it easier for many artists to play in certain areas.

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.

I allowed artists to play for as long as they felt they could justifiably continue to create.

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.

When I was doing jazz concerts in America, I would use the biggest names I could find.

For years, Jazz At The Philharmonic albums were the only ones of their kind.