Music represents nature. Nature represents life. Jazz represents nature. Jazz is life.

I feel that L.A. has not always been my strongest base for support. That can be for various reasons.

There was a period which I refer to as the 'Golden Age of Jazz,' which sort of encompasses the middle Thirties through the Sixties, we had a lot of great innovators, all creating things which will last the world for a long, long time.

Charlie Parker stuck out in my mind.

I am a person who thinks about the music first in trying to achieve something musically valid.

How ironic that the Negro, who more than any other people can claim America's culture as his own, is being persecuted and repressed; that the Negro, who has exemplified the humanities in his very existence, is being rewarded with inhumanity.

I think what we need is a more welcoming mode from the people who put on a hundred million country-western shows on television. How about a monthly jazz show?