Count Basie practically adopted me at 13. We became closer and closer and I ended up conducting for him and Sinatra.

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

I was married for 36 years but now I'm free.

Everybody has their idiosyncrasies.

We got into all the trouble you could ever imagine. We figured that if the Jones boys and all the gangsters ran Chicago, we had our own territory now. All the stores, all the crime, we were in charge of everything, my stepbrother and my brother.

Young people should travel, and they don’t. You can’t know if you don’t go.

My brother died of cancer two years ago (1998), renal cell carcinoma. He was my only real brother and I didn't know what to do. I'd never been so desperate in my life.