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" I listened to a lot of King Crimson back in the day. "

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" It's pretty rare in jazz to have a full-on steady band. "

" Sometimes, with vocalese, I'm dealing with something, a great solo from the past, which is so iconic I can't presume to change it or mess with it. "

" Karl Johnson, my first piano player at Milt Trenier's, he just swung really hard and gave me a sense of really belonging to the jazz scene. "

" You learn as much as you can from the people that you work with. That's why you want to surround yourself with the heaviest people that you can possibly get to. "

Surround Yourself

" Man, I just feel so fortunate to be a jazz musician at all. I have a hard time thinking of it any other way. It's such a fulfilling vocation. I love it. "

" I hope to be at the top of my game when I'm 65 or 70. I don't want to reach my peak at 29. Not that I'm holding back anything, but there's a bunch of junk I don't know. "

" I was very lucky that more experienced musicians allowed me to caterwaul until I figured out what it was really about. "

" Of course we all know when music's too much in the head, and we define our greatest players by the way they are able to communicate directly from their emotional selves. "

" There are incredible musicians around the world. "

" Chicago has a burly, action-oriented but still self-assured and relaxed confidence to its stride. The city has a lot of wide-open space and all the possibilities that suggests. There's a lot of horizontal grandeur here. "

" You don't know what bravery is until you overcome fear. "

" If you're going to be transparent, you're going to have to let the music come that wants to come. "

" While I revel in the memories of my own Grammy moment, I also know how it feels to walk away empty-handed. "

" The singer is always an ambassador of music. "

" We live in a society where it's cool to be criminal. "

" I've got enough miles under my belt to know that whatever you envision in your mind, even if it comes true, will only keep a shape in the most general way. "

" I know how hard it's been for me to get my thing out there. "

" There's a spiritual complement to any attempt at transposing a commitment to humanity through music or art. "

" Out in L.A., things relax even further than they do in Chicago. There's such a looseness to it, and there's a potentially refreshing advantage to that. "

" You can start from any source material, and you can approach it with a jazz ear, and then it will become a jazz moment. "

" Each of the CDs prior to 'Flirting With Twilight' were more like roller-coaster rides. "

" I don't really have a more intellectualized approach. After the fact, I can sure talk about stuff a lot - but when I make decisions, I really just follow what sounds good to me. "

" People just want to dig; they want to dance. They don't want to work all through the night, and neither do I. I like getting 'out there,' but communication should be occurring on more levels than heavy-laden philosophical. "

" One doesn't have to scat to be a jazz singer. "

" You work very hard on the lyrics. Getting them to fit the contours of improvised melodies. "

" I want to be the jazz singer. "

" I really thought I was gonna have a straight gig. But these jazz musicians put their arms around me time and again and said, 'Hey, young fella, you're one of us. Come with us.' That's a big deal when you're young and looking for your way in the world. "

" I couldn't do what I do without the encouragement and influence of the musicians I played with in Chicago. "

" It must be a hellish thing to know what's possible in music, to be hearing things all the time and not have an appropriate outlet for them. "

" It's easy to get tired of religious fundamentalists. They're such a bore. They have no sense of mystery. It's a drag, man. "