I was married for 36 years but now I'm free..

Whenever a woman would come too close, I would cut her off. Part of that was vindictive - but that was totally subconscious..

A song should have all the color and beauty of every rose..

Everybody has their idiosyncrasies..

I went with Lionel Hampton for three years. Out of that came a trip to Europe..

You have to know that your real home is within..

There’s nothing in the world worse than having an opportunity that you’re not prepared for. Good luck usually follows the collision of opportunity an….

You want your parents to say, "Hey, I'm proud of you." When you don't hear that, you learn to compensate. You say, "Hell, I don't need their approval….

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..

Young people should travel, and they don’t. You can’t know if you don’t go..

I've been driven all my life by a spirit of adventure and a criminal level of optimism. I believed in my dreams because they were my only option. The….

We were in the heart of the ghetto in Chicago during the Depression, and every block - it was probably the biggest black ghetto in America - every bl….

Making a record is like painting a school bus with a toothbrush.

Arts is just as important as military defense, you know? Emotional defense is just as important..

If architecture is frozen music then music must be liquid architecture..

I chose the trombone because the trombone players in the marching band got to be up front with the majorettes (because of the slides) and I loved tha….

It has been proven time and time again in countless studies that students who actively participate in arts education are twice as likely to read for ….

What happens when you get a big break and you haven't prepared yourself? That becomes the biggest mistake you've ever made. I see it happen all the t….

I improvised my life along the way - I just moved step-by-step. And I knew that if I got better, something would happen..

Louis 'Thunder Thumbs' Johnson was one of the greatest bass players to ever pick up the instrument, as a member of the Brothers Johnson, we shared de….

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 ….