“As long as there are musicians who have a passion for spontaneity, for creating something that's never been before, the art form of jazz will flourish.”

“I always felt that I was born in the wrong era. I wanted to be friends with John Garfield, for instance.”

“I always told the people at Cal Arts that if they wanted me to do Jazz studies, first of all, there couldn't be a big band within 500 miles and that I could do what I wanted to do. And they said I could.”

“I can write a song about my hero Che Guevara and call it 'Song for Che.'”

“I don't sing now, because I had polio when I was 15, bulbar polio. This was when the epidemic was happening. And I was lucky that it didn't affect my lungs or my legs. It went to my face and kind of paralyzed my vocal chords, and I wasn't able to sing. And they said I was very lucky that I would get over it, which I did.”

“I have a very clear picture of what I want to do and what I feel is important as far as my contribution or my appreciation and respect for this life that we're living, and to try to make it better. I can't feel that I'm making it better playing commercial music, and I never could, and I never will.”

“I have music inside me and I'm very lucky to be able to play music and that's the way that I try to do it.”

“I just see myself as a human being that's concerned about life.”

“I just sit down at the piano and rattle it off.”

“I just try to play music from my heart and bring as much beauty as I can to as many people as I can. Just give them other alternatives, especially people who aren't exposed to creative music.”

“I listened to classical music. I listened to jazz. I listened to everything. And I started becoming interested in the sounds of jazz. And I went to a concert of Jazz at the Philharmonic when we lived in Omaha, Nebraska, and I saw Charlie Parker play and Billie Holiday sing and Lester Young play, and that did it. I said, 'That's what I want to do.'”

“I think it's very important to live in the present. One of the great things that improvising teaches you is the magic of the moment that you're in because, when you improvise, you're in right now. You're not in yesterday or tomorrow - you're right in the moment.”

“I want them to come away with discovering the music inside them. And not thinking about themselves as jazz musicians, but thinking about themselves as good human beings, striving to be a great person and maybe they'll become a great musician.”

“I want to expand jazz; I don't want to keep the audience limited. I want to reach people who have never come to a jazz concert before. One way to do that is by making records that have a lot of different kinds of music on them.”

“I wish I could've been friends with Charlie Parker and played with him. That's my period. I feel real close to the '40s - and actually, I was born in '37, so I was a kid singing on the radio in the '40s. But I always dreamed of going to big cities.”

“It used to be that creative music was most of the music that you heard back in the '30s and '40s, and now it's like 3 percent. So, its kind of a struggle getttin' it out there.”

“I've got a collection of songs that I've had, I keep adding to and they're all great American composers. I wanted to showcase American composers and I've done that on a lot of my records and played things by American composers that I really respect.”

“James Cotton is a real blues guy, and he played with Muddy Waters, and it surprised me that they would want me to make a record with them, that he called me to do this record. I'd never done anything like that before. But I love blues, so I was very happy.”

“My parents were on the Grand Ole Opry. They traveled all over the country singing hillbilly music. That's what they called it back then. They were friends with Roy Acuff and the Delmore Brothers and the Carter Family. And all of my brothers and sisters who were older than me started on the show, after they were big enough to hold a guitar and sing.”

“Some tracks are with quartet and some tracks are with synthesizer.”

“The bass, no matter what kind of music you're playing, it just enhances the sound and makes everything sound more beautiful and full. When the bass stops, the bottom kind of drops out of everything.”

“There's like a special group of people that come from different parts of the planet to study with me. It's nice. I just gave a workshop in Boston at the New England Conservatory, which was really nice.”

“We're here to bring beauty to the world and make a difference in this planet. That's what art forms are about.”

“When we first started playing we did a lot of rehearsing. We used to write out everything. In fact, that's the way everybody rehearses: we play the tunes and improvise.”

“When you listen to a symphony orchestra, and the basses don't - there's no bass part, there's not that much depth. That's why I'm attracted to the instrument, the bass. It brings depth. It's like playing in a rainforest.”

“You can't be at your full creative power if you are sedated.”