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" I'm a tremendous believer and supporter in hip-hop and rap. "

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" Music in movies is all about dissonance and consonance, tension and release. "

" I went with Lionel Hampton for three years. Out of that came a trip to Europe. "

" When you work with Ray Charles, Billy Eckstine and Frank Sinatra, and you tell them to jump without a net, you better know what you're talking about. Thank God I was ready for it. "

" I'm a great believer in letting lyrics just flow out, wherever they come from. "

" We got into all the trouble you could ever imagine. We figured that if the Jones boys and all the gangsters ran Chicago, we had our own territory now. All the stores, all the crime, we were in charge of everything, my stepbrother and my brother. "

" I never felt like I had a mother. "

" I was reading Omar Khayyam, Kahlil Gibran, Rumi, L. Ron Hubbard, all sorts of philosophy. Bebop cats are like that. Curious. I wanted to know about everything. "

" I didn't understand key signatures or anything, you know. I'd say silly things at the top of a trumpet part like, 'Note, when you play B naturals, make the B naturals a half step lower because they sound funny if they're B naturals.' And some guy said: 'Idiot, just put a flat on the third line and it's a key signature, you know?' "

" When you produce an album, you're dealing with it theatrically. It has to have a structure, and the inner response to that is that the ear loves it. "

" A great song can make a terrible singer sound good, but a good singer - you put a great song on top of that, you're really in great shape! "

" I met Ray Charles at 14, and he was 16. But he was like a hundred years older than me. "

" Just blow in it and sound bad for about a year and then make it sound a little bit better, and you get a little band together, and then you get a few jobs. You take four guys that sound half bad, but if they're 25 percent each, they can give 100 percent, you know? "

" Arts is just as important as military defense, you know? Emotional defense is just as important. "

" I don't remember feeling love. "

" I travel like a maniac. I travel more than anyone I know. I love learning the languages. "

" Cherish your mistakes, and you won't keep making them over and over again. It's the same with heartbreaks and girls and everything else. Cherish them, and they'll put some wealth in you. "

" I like all music. The only music I don't like is bad music. "

" I've met every freak in the business. "

" Every day, my daddy told me the same thing. 'Once a task is just begun, never leave it till it's done. Be the labour great or small, do it well or not at all.' "

" I got in the school band and the school choir. It all hit me like a ton of bricks, everything just came out. I played percussion for a while, and stayed after school forever just tinkering around with different things, the clarinets and the violins. "

" I never cared about money or fame, and I don't care now. I follow the groove, and money always follows. "

" My earliest memories are being pinned to a fence with a switchblade. "

" China's got a billion people and a hit record over there is a million records. You know that ain't right. "

" Without the Fender bass, there'd be no rock n' roll or no Motown. The electric guitar had been waiting 'round since 1939 for a nice partner to come along. It became an electric rhythm section, and that changed everything. "

" My father was a carpenter, a very good carpenter. He also worked for the Jones boys. They were not family members, we weren't related at all. They started the policy racket in Chicago, and they had the five and dime store. "

" It's amazing how much trouble you can get in when you don't have anything else to do. "

" I was married for 36 years but now I'm free. "

" When I was about five or seven years old my mother was placed in a mental institution and so we were with our father who worked very hard, and we had to figure a lot of things out. "

" I was inspired by a lot of people when I was young. Every band that came through town, to the theater, or the dance hall. I was at every dance, every night club, listened to every band that came through, because in those days we didn't have MTV, we didn't have television. "

" When I was 13, I started working in a nightclub with Ray Charles. That's the greatest school in the world, the school of the streets. Ray taught me how to read in Braille. He was only two years older than me, but it was like he was 100 years older. "