My thing is, once you start to put a backbeat on your music or something that has a machine in it, you have popularity, but you lose the flexibility. And you lose a richness.

There was one thing Beethoven didn't do. When one of his string quartets was played, you can believe the second violin wasn't improvising.

The heart of a music is its rhythm. The heart of rhythm section music is the rhythm.

To put on your suit and play jazz music, ... knowing that many people in your audience have never experienced any jazz whatsoever, you have to believe beyond the fear of rejection. But that fear is part of creating.

The blues. It runs through all American music. Somebody bending the note. The other is the two-beat groove. It's in New Orleans music, it's in jazz, it's in country music, it's in gospel.

I believed in studying just because I knew education was a privilege. It was the discipline of study, to get into the habit of doing something that you don't want to do.