Did you know you would become as successful as you have? Hell, no. But you know what? You were prepared, baby.

Michael (Jackson) was so shy, he'd sit down and sing behind the couch with his back to me while I sat with my hands over my eyes-and the lights off.

My grandmother had this high-tech security system - a rusty nail she used to lock the door.

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

If architecture is frozen music then music must be liquid architecture.

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.

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.