These days politics, religion, media seem to get all mixed up. Television became the new religion a long time back and the media has taken over.

I understood jazz, I understood how it worked. That's what I apply to everything.

You have to understand a bit about the poetry of the blues to know where the references are coming from.

I like [George] Benson because I just like it. I like that kind of style. I don't like the broken up kind of style. I don't like where you play for 16 bars and then break it up into what somebody's version of what birds twittering sounds like, or what the sound of the city is, or what New York sounds like.

You gotta fight every day to keep mediocrity at bay.

I can see more naturalness in basic blues, basic R & B, basic rock 'n' roll.

In order to win you must be prepared to lose sometime. And leave one or two cards showing.