Making a record is like painting a school bus with a toothbrush

Jazz has the power to make men forget their differences and come together... Jazz is the personification of transforming overwhelmingly negative circumstances into freedom, friendship, hope, and dignity.

I never felt like I had a mother.

I was inspired by a lot of people when I was young, every band that came through town, to the theater, or the dance hall. I was at every dance, every night club, listened to every band that came through, because in those days we didn't have MTV, we didn't have television.

Excellence isn't an act, it's a habit

The climate in the '50s and '60s for black performers or black people in the entertainment business was atrocious. It was atrocious.

When I was about five or seven years old my mother was placed in a mental institution and so we were with our father who worked very hard, and we had to figure a lot of things out.