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.
I had to figure out how to survive in New York, and most of my time was occupied in getting an apartment and getting money. A lot of older jazz guys looked out for me and found me gigs and places to stay.
I never minded giving my opinions. They are just opinions, and I had studied music and I had strong feelings. I was happy for my opinions to join all the other opinions. But you have to be prepared for what comes back, especially if you don’t agree with the dominant mythology.
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.
There’s always the cliche of the choir shouting and clapping. OK, you have to do that, but there’s also introspective parts, parts where you just follow someone that’s preaching. There’s lots of different emotions and moods that a service requires.
If you are serious about American culture and you are serious about Afro-American culture, you are in a lot of pain. You are not – you are not smiling about it.
Benny Goodman’s band was integrated before baseball. Even before it was physically integrated, music was integrated. Everyone listened to Armstrong and Ellington. The 20s was called the Jazz Age. It’s part of being American.
I play piano and drums very poorly and French horn and tuba all equally as bad.
If you’re not making mistakes, you’re not trying.
Grace Kelly plays with intelligence, wit and feeling. She has a great amount of natural ability and the ability to adapt. That is the hallmark of a first-class jazz musician.
I dress up a certain way because I respect the music.
Through first-class education, a generation marches down the long uncertain road of the future with confidence.
Young kids are always singing and painting. When you get to that second and third grade level, you’re supposed to put all that aside.
What I really have in my head, my imagination, my understanding of music, I never really get that out.
Thank the good Lord for a job.
The soul gives us resilience – an essential quality since we constantly have to rebound from hardship.
The black hole in democracy is integrity. The great unspoken is integrity. When integrity is not first and foremost, it’s quite palpable but not visible. It’s always there. Jazz highlights it because musicians and jazz always represented a high level of integrity.
No particular music makes me feel nostalgic. If it’s great, it just keeps me in the present moment. That level of music is like a classic story, like the Iliad-something so perfect it can never be old.
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.
I’m just lucky to have the type of friends and musicians and people dedicated to my music that I do.