When I came up, it was all about originality and collective research. There is an awful lot of imitation going on now.

Play difficult and interesting things. If you play boring things, you risk losing your appetite. Saxophone can be tedious with too much of the same.

I heard Sidney Bechet play a Duke Ellington piece and fell in love with the soprano saxophone.

Circumstances can be very important. Find the right people to work with.

A jazz musician is a combination orator, dialectician, mathematician, athlete, entertainer, poet, singer, dancer, diplomat, educator, student, comedian, artist, seducer, public masturbator, and general all-round good fellow.

I started in New Orleans music and played all through the history of jazz.

Nobody was playing the soprano saxophone and certainly nobody was trying to do anything with it. So I was all alone. I didn't know that at first.