It's amazing how much trouble you can get in when you don't have anything else to do.

Playing the game, and unfortunately, playing the gangster game is very profitable.

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.

I'm just a musician and a record producer.

Every day you must be able to say, I have to get up because I'm needed by someone. As long as you have that, you're healthy.

All the jazz guys had interracial relationships, and even the ladies did. Over the years, interracial relationships have been a hip, almost defiant thing, a way of saying "Nobody can put a boundary around me."

We were in the heart of the ghetto in Chicago during the Depression, and every block - it was probably the biggest black ghetto in America - every block also is the spawning ground practically for every gangster, black and white, in America too.