I had a 10-year heroin habit and kicked that. Then I became an alcoholic. I drank two fifth's a day.

It’s like a language. You learn the alphabet, which are the scales. You learn sentences, which are the chords. And then you talk extemporaneously with the horn. It’s a wonderful thing to speak extemporaneously, which is something I’ve never gotten the hang of. But musically I love to talk just off the top of my head. And that’s what jazz music is all about.

We recorded to document ourselves, not to sell a lot of records.

If you like an instrument that sings, play the saxophone. At its best it's like the human voice.

I came from an era when we didn't use electronic instruments. The bass wasn't even amplified. The sound was the sound you got.

I practiced saxophone eight hours a day for the first two years I played.

The saxophone is actually a translation of the human voice, in my conception. All you can do is play melody. No matter how complicated it gets, it's still a melody.