"I don't have any regrets. I've lived a good life."

"It's getting so bad, a colored man hasn't got any country."

"I think I'm a jazz musician. I don't know what else I am."

"Seems to me that the only thing that matters is that we like it, and we do. We like to blow, and we like to swing. And we like to make people happy."

"My whole life, my whole soul, my whole everything, I give to music. And I don't care what nobody says."