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.
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.
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.
Jazz was uplifted by what I did.
My juices needed restoring. I needed a sabbatical from the record business.
For years, Jazz At The Philharmonic albums were the only ones of their kind.
