You don't try to duplicate certain things that other cats do, because you could never do it as well as they do. Nobody can get on that tenor saxophone and play like Trane, because he's the only one who can spell out chords and sound good when he does it.

As you get older - for example, in our band we have members of our orchestra, like Carlos Enriquez and Ali Jackson and Walter Blanning. I taught them when they were in high school, and now they teach me.I'll regularly call Ali and say, "Man, can you break this rhythm down for me?" Or Carlos was actually our music director in Cuba, and he's been instrumental in a lot of my education, and I started to develop a saying with them, because they tease me all the time - you get older, you have that familiar relationship - I say, "You have to follow your young leadership, too."

The first time I ever played the trumpet in public, I played the Marine Hymn. I sounded terrible.

The nerves are a problem on trumpet, because when you mess up everyone can hear it. Just remember most people are too polite to say anything about it. That should calm your nerves.

I try to put a lot of our music in my music - by that I mean of American music.

I got my first trumpet when I was six years old, from Al Hirt. My father was playing in Al Hirt's band at that time.

My daddy expected that my brothers and I and our generation would make the world a better place. He had lived in an America of continual social progress.