The arts speak across epochs. If you think that people started to build a cathedral in 1315 and the people worked on that cathedral, it wasn't going to be finished until 1585. So they were thinking 200 years from now. Maybe by the time I die, this wall might be put up.

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.

Everything comes out in blues music: joy , pain , struggle . Blues is affirmation with absolute elegance.

The history of jazz lets us know that this period in our history is not the only period we've come through together. If we truly understood the history of our national arts, we'd know that we have mutual aspirations, a shared history, in good times and bad.

The musicians I respected were much older than me. I expected them to cut my head, and they did.

And my identity...I never really wondered about it because, unfortunately, I sounded like myself. People be saying I sound like Miles or Clifford Brown.

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