I found this out over the years, that racism is a thinly veiled disguise over economics and money. It really is.
I learned real early why God gave us two ears and one mouth, because you’re supposed to listen twice as much as you talk.
A song should have all the color and beauty of every rose.
If architecture is frozen music then music must be liquid architecture.
Every country can be defined through their food, their music and their language. That’s the soul of a country.
Hell, nobody knows where jazz is going to go. There may be a kid right now in Chitlin Switch, Georgia, who is going to come along and upset everybody.
When you’re over the hill, that’s when you pick up speed.
I’m a tremendous believer and supporter in hip-hop and rap.
Editing while you’re writing is like strangling the baby in the crib.
It’s amazing how much trouble you can get in when you don’t have anything else to do.
My grandmother had this high-tech security system – a rusty nail she used to lock the door.
Making a record is like painting a school bus with a toothbrush.
I was reading Omar Khayyam, Kahlil Gibran, Rumi, L. Ron Hubbard, all sorts of philosophy. Bebop cats are like that. Curious. I wanted to know about everything.
It was messed up, because in 1947 my family moved to Seattle and I had to get up at 5:00 o’clock in the morning to catch the ferry back to Bremerton every morning because I was Boys Club president.
Some summers my father would take us down to visit our grandmother in Louisville, who was an ex-slave, Susan Jones, and she had a shotgun shack they call it, and no electricity, a well in the back, a coal stove, kerosene lamps.
Eight kids and a stepmother, and I just wanted to be out of there and so when I got a scholarship from Boston to the Schillinger House, which is now the Berklee School of Music, I couldn’t wait to get out of there.
A lot of the guys were like that – Oscar Pettiford – they just took me under their wing, and that’s why I automatically help young people. I just love it, because they did that for me.
Count Basie practically adopted me at 13. We became closer and closer and I ended up conducting for him and Sinatra.
The act of multitrack recording is the act of arranging.
A person’s age can be determined by the degree of pain he experiences when he comes in contact with a new idea.