Some summers my father would take us down to visit our grandmother in Louisville, who was an ex-slave, Susan Jones, and she had a shotgun shack they call it, and no electricity, a well in the back, a coal stove, kerosene lamps.

I'm never in my life going to do a record that's a tribute to myself. I don't need it.

I went with Lionel Hampton for three years. Out of that came a trip to Europe.

Hell, nobody knows where jazz is going to go. There may be a kid right now in Chitlin Switch, Georgia, who is going to come along and upset everybody.

If you started in New York you were dealing with the biggest guys in the world. You're dealing with Charlie Parker and all the big bands and everything. We got more experience working in Seattle.

I look back and say, "This must have been somebody else." I am not going to tell you that when I was 4, I dreamed about all of this.

I improvised my life along the way - I just moved step-by-step. And I knew that if I got better, something would happen.