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

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.

They who love dancing too much seem to have more brains in their feet than in their head.

Dancing is a wonderful training for girls, it's the first way you learn to guess what a man is going to do before he does it.

I don't see my dancing or acting as two separate things. I don't define them separately, so I can't say one has helped the other, It's all the same thing. More than anything I love being on stage and performing.

It took a brave editor in the U.S. to sign a contract for Dancing Girls, and without her belief in the book, I'm not sure it would ever have found its way into print.

Dancing, apart to music with a beat, is my legacy.

Dancing on 'Dancing With The Stars' really broadened my fan base. I jumped off the stage backwards one week, and so many women come up to me now and say, 'You're so brave. I can't believe you put yourself out there like that'. If that inspires some girl out there, then great, because boys aren't the only ones who get to have fun. We get to have fun too.

I got started dancing because I knew it was one way to meet girls.

I had certain physical limitations that made me change the choreography for myself or made me more interested in choreography only rather than dancing. I have never been a person who wanted to just dance. I have always been interested in developing for other people.

On my fifth film, it was then that I stopped dancing.

Life is like dancing. If we have a big floor, many people will dance. Some will get angry when the rhythm changes. But life is changing all the time.

Aerobic dancing is already adjusting to injury problems and will probably phase out to some extent.

It is difficult to produce a television documentary that is both incisive and probing when every twelve minutes one is interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper.

Finally, you get the job, and you think you'll be dancing on the ceiling, but I just wanted to go take a nap. It was just like a weight had been lifted off or something.

You don't go dancing in the day. You don't go golfing in the night.

It was always acting, singing and dancing that I loved.