And that's the soulful thing about playing: you offer something to somebody. You don't know if they'll like it, but you offer it.

It's important to address young people in the reopening of New Orleans. In rebuilding, let's revisit the potential of American democracy and American glory.

When me and my brother would go to see our daddy playing, there'd be 30 people in the audience. I was only 14 or 15, but I realised something was wrong.

Thank the good Lord for a job.

Jazz celebrates older generations and not just the youth movement. When you "sell" only to people of a certain age, you get cut off from the main body of experience. The power of couple dancing and courtship, it's elegant, and you wouldn't realize America was once a nation of dancers and singers today. People of all races could dance and sing.

How great musicians demonstrate a mutual respect and trust on the bandstand can alter your outlook on the world and enrich every aspect of your life, understanding what it means to be a global citizen in the most modern sense.

I grew up in the South, in New Orleans, where guys torture you all the time. So I didn't really grow up on the self-esteem campaign. When you were lousy at something, they told you you were lousy, and they told you how to fix it.