My juices needed restoring. I needed a sabbatical from the record business.

I don't know who's 18 years old today that, 20 years hence, is going to be a jazz fan.

I made it easier for many artists to play in certain areas.

My function at Verve was that of a genuine producer in artists and repertoire.

I allowed artists to play for as long as they felt they could justifiably continue to create.

The public, hearing pop music, is, without knowing it, also soaking up jazz.

I'm talking as a professional impresario. I'm not judging anybody at all.

Ella can work nightclubs that Duke might not be able to work, because of having the big band. Where they go now is strictly a matter of their own names and talents.

When I was doing jazz concerts in America, I would use the biggest names I could find.

Sponsors and networks will really go all out and simply evaluate people on the basis of talent.

Ellington is a writer and arranger, as well as a musician and leader. He does movie sound tracks.

Jazz was uplifted by what I did.

The history of all big jazz bands shows was, first they played for dancing, and then they played for singing.

I find myself more at peace when I live in Europe.

My juices needed restoring. I needed a sabbatical from the record business.

I don't want to sound as if I'm doing something tremendously special. But I am a jazz fan.

I still continue to do at least four concert tours a year, and in many cases, as many as six.

To play today in London, next week in Madrid and the week after that in Warsaw is a bit better than playing Newark and Baltimore and Philadelphia. I've been doing that for 20 years.

There are very few groups that really stay together. The leaders of groups make enough money to be able to afford to work a maximum of 35-40 weeks a year.

I'm concerned with trend. I don't know where jazz fans will come from 20 years from now.

The record companies are interested in the kind of sales they can get from the rock groups.

Germany is probably the richest country in Western Europe. Yet they wouldn't take any television with Duke and Ella, their reaction being that people weren't interested in it.

I don't think I will ever do any tours again in the United States. I rather think that that's over with.

I don't say that the supposed Civil Rights development is a myth, but it's a matter of dealing with reality. It's purely peripheral and, in many cases, it's just a facade.

The economic picture in the States today doesn't allow for jazz concerts in a tour fashion. People now are too used to the Festival, which gives them more names for the same price.

As long as we're in a democracy, I have to give what I think the majority of people will enjoy.

I don't think that jazz, as any kind of an art form, has any permanence attached to it, apart from the practitioners of it.

You will always find a few people in any area that would like things done completely their way.

In 1958, I decided that I was going to live in Europe permanently. So in 1959 I moved to Lugano, Switzerland.

If you look at my audiences, even in Europe, they're hardly teenagers.

For years, Jazz At The Philharmonic albums were the only ones of their kind.

If I were to put on Barbra Streisand and Duke Ellington, one might say the combination isn't good.

There are many artists that I present that I admit I like less than I do others. But I think that they warrant being presented by my own, personal standards.

Amsterdam must have more than a million people. But the only area where jazz is really profitable and successful in an economic sense is in Japan. That's because they haven't been exposed enough.

Natural resources are so vast that no single individual or business is going to protect them; they don't have an incentive to.

The bronze powder business, however, no longer required my personal attention, and was well managed by those I had chosen as the guardians of a secret, which was long and honourably kept.

I have done things politically, and I've been running a business at the same time, but I sort of joke that to some extent I do more than most legislators have done in their whole careers, and I've been doing it as a part-time job.

Howard Hughes himself was a regular at the restaurant, and in a way it became his headquarters, too. Howard had recently relocated to Las Vegas, so when he wanted to do business in Los Angeles, he went into the back of our restaurant to use the telephone.

Prosperous farmers mean more employment, more prosperity for the workers and the business men of every industrial area in the whole country.

My parents were amazing people who had no business being together - and they knew it.

We mean by "politics" the people's business - the most important business there is.

Slovakia's joining the OECD in 1999 is totally dependent on meeting economic reforms required such as transparency and legislation that permits fair and open conduct of trade and business.

The way the business things work in Russia is you have to meet people, you have to go through a certain amount of etiquette and business things are done just simply by a shake of the hand and whether they like you or not.

I make no claim to being a business genius. You can make so much money in this business that it loses its value.

It costs a great deal of money to do a musical, and the more money involved, the more big business influences the artform.

It's a very hard and competitive business in which you have to fight every day in order to impose yourself.

I know the history of the record business so well because I followed Billie Holiday into the record studios. It was so primitive compared to the sophisticated business today.

Chicago kept industry, attracted new business, became the center for convention trade and transportation.

I have been, and will go on, fighting that damnable, dirty, rotten business with all the power at my command.