I stayed with them for about a year up there and, at night, worked over in Long Island at a club called The High Hat Club which was like a pseudo jazz / blues place.

We worked over at that place The Plantation Inn with The Del Rios. It was really wild over there.

I wear a lot of different hats - from writer to producer and artist. We all do 5 or 6 jobs, everything from creating our own graphic design to actually recording and the whole bit.

I felt a little uncomfortable because, when I went in to the military, I was the main male vocalist they had and when I came out they had like two or three vocalists. Otis came in when I was in the military, too.

Some of my other heroes around that time were, oddly enough, Frank Sinatra, Nat Cole and people like that - I was always more inclined to listen to ballads.

Growing up in Memphis and listening to all kinds of music and dreaming... So that was one of the first times I wrote a complete song and set it to music and the whole bit. From then on, I was busy with it.

There was some scene in The Blues Brothers movie, when they had the chicken wire across the front of the stage, and it was almost like that. They had a big guard rail around the stage, which kept the college kids from getting on... we had some good times.

The first song that I wrote was when I was with The Del Rios. I was like 14 years old but I was always putting my thoughts down on paper even before then because it was like an escape - a way of unleashing all the stuff.

It's been a rollercoaster ride. There have been some great moments and some low points... like when I was leaving Stax. That's when I actually thought of getting out of the business.

When I came out of the military, I had a club in Memphis and I started using the The Bar Kays as my club band. They were still only in the middle school - but I'd take them on the road with me on the weekends, sometimes.

When I came out of service, the first couple of releases didn't really hit so I just took a little hiatus and sat down to see what was happening. I just glued my ears to the radio and then I started writing - the first hit record that came out was "Everybody Loves a Winner."

I stayed with them for about a year up there and, at night, worked over in Long Island at a club called The High Hat Club which was like a pseudo jazz / blues place.

When I came out of service, the first couple of releases didn't really hit so I just took a little hiatus and sat down to see what was happening. I just glued my ears to the radio and then I started writing - the first hit record that came out was 'Everybody Loves a Winner.'

The blues is the foundation, and it's got to carry the top. The other part of the scene, the rock 'n' roll and the jazz, are the walls of the blues.

What makes my approach special is that I do different things. I do jazz, blues, country music and so forth. I do them all, like a good utility man.

In my view a jazz musician is a great musician.

Words are the children of reason and, therefore, can't explain it. They really can't translate feeling because they're not part of it. That's why it bugs me when people try to analyze jazz as an intellectual theorem. It's not. It's feeling.

So our ears got used to listening to jazz in the place that it was that the bass player could not play. No one really realized it and really addressed it until the bass players who could play their instrument came along and started doing something with it.

It is veneer, rouge, aestheticism, art museums, new theaters, etc. that make America impotent. The good things are football, kindness, and jazz bands.

Humans are imperfect. That's one of the reasons that classical and jazz are in trouble. We're on the quest for the perfect performance and every note has to be right. Man, every note is not right in life.

I hate Stanley Clark, but I have to admit he's playing Jazz whether I like it or not.

I have to plead basic ignorance of most new jazz artists here.

If one takes all the styles in jazz harmonically from the earliest beginnings to the latest experiments, he still has a rather limited scope when compared to the rest of music in the world.

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

I don't like freedom jazz - I think it's void of roots and void of foundation.

Jazz needs the help. It's the more sophisticated music. All the other music is on the TV, but jazz isn't.

I listened to Billie Holiday a lot in order to learn to sing. She remains one of the extraordinary jazz singers. But my intent is to become my own voice, to be able to interpret these songs in my own way.

I think what we need is a more welcoming mode from the people who put on a hundred million country-western shows on television. How about a monthly jazz show?

Life is a lot like jazz... it's best when you improvise.

I still love the whole history of jazz. The old things sound better than ever.

A jazz musician is a juggler who uses harmonies instead of oranges.

Jazz is a music of great achievements but speed and chops serve a different function in jazz.

I don't want to appear hostile, like I'm hostile to L.A. or that I feel that the people don't appreciate jazz. I don't think it's that. I think it's something more. It's something a little bit more complicated than that.

Eclecticism is the word. Like a jazz musician who creates his own style out of the styles around him, I play by ear.

People sometimes say it takes a long time to become a jazz fan, but for me it took about five seconds.

My brother had a big band in high school; after that we continued to play together, eventually forming a group called the Jazz Brothers, that recorded for Riverside Records.

Here in England we live at a slower pace, have more time to enjoy things - like good jazz.

Jazz is rhythm and meaning.

Many jazz artists go to L.A. seeking a more comfortable life and then they really stop playing.

A jazz musician can improvise based on his knowledge of music. He understands how things go together. For a chef, once you have that basis, that's when cuisine is truly exciting.

What I can say is that for may years jazz musicians had to go to Europe, for instance, to be respected and to be sort of treated not in a discriminatory way. I don't think there is anything controversial about me saying that. This is just a fact.

I listen to a mixture of old jazz, contemporary, pop, some world beat stuff and various odds and ends.

One of the things I like about jazz, kid, is I don't know what's going to happen next. Do you?

I've gone the full spectrum - from gospel to blues to jazz to soul to pop - and the public has accepted what I've done through it all. I think it means I've been doing something right at the right time.

I progressed through so many different styles of music through my teen years, both as a player and a vocalist, particularly the jazz and pop of the early 20th Century.

Jazz is the big brother of the blues. If a guy's playing blues like we play, he's in high school. When he starts playing jazz it's like going on to college, to a school of higher learning.

Not with the Rochester Philharmonic, but I formed my own orchestra, made up of musicians from the Eastman School, where I'm on the faculty now, direct the Jazz Ensemble and teach improvisation classes.

I wanted to make a jazz record. I didn't want it to be a standards record.

The stories from 1975 on are not finished and there is no resolve. I could spend 50 hours on the last 25 years of jazz and still not do it justice.