I haven't got a car or a house. I've got a wife, but I didn't pay for her! I spend all my money on my glorious wife. She's here with a knife at my throat!
We don't play slow and we don't play fast, we play half fast
My life has always been my music, it's always come first, but the music ain't worth nothing if you can't lay it on the public. The main thing is to live for that audience, 'cause what you're there for is to please the people.
If it hadn't been for Jazz, there wouldn't be no rock and roll.
I spent nine days in the Downtown Los Angeles City Jail. The judge gave me a suspended sentence and I went to work that night - wailed just like nothing happened. What strucked me funny though - I laughed real loud when several movie stars came up to the bandstand while we played a dance set and told me, when they heard about me getting caught with marijuana, they thought marijuana was a chick. Woo boy - that really fractured me!
You can't take it for granted. Even if we have two, three days off I still have to blow that horn a few hours to keep up the chops. I mean I've been playing 50 years, and that's what I've been doing in order to keep in that groove there.
You will never know what the meaning of Jazz is if ask what it means.
I'm pretty Sicilian if I've been crossed. I don't seek revenge, but I never forget. And I make it hard to repair, which is not a great quality because if people held me to that standard, no one would be around me - ever.
People who get to the top of any organisation are generally dysfunctional human beings who are overachieving, overcompensating or overbearing.
I'm a real sucker for guitars. I've had a crush on many, many a guitarist.
You can wake up every day looking forward to new adventures with hope smiling brightly before you because you have a Savior. You are baptized in His Church. . . . You just need to stay in, pressing forward with a brightness of hope to your heavenly home.