I grew up in Shanghai 'til I was 10 or 11, with one year in Tibet. When I was 5 or 6 years old, the American radio station came to Shanghai, and I used to love bebop and jazz, but I didn't know where it came from.
Most of what I listen to now is mainstream jazz from 1935 right up to and including early bebop and cool jazz.
When I heard Charlie Parker, I knew that that was going to be the new wave, the new way to play jazz. From that point on, I was sold with... the idea of bebop.
Tony Bennett is an iconic jazz legend.
I have a fondness for jazz, particularly for jazz singers, Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald all the way through the Sinatra era.
I was three or four, and my mother would have a Bing Crosby record playing through the house. It was my introduction to jazz, harmonies, melodies, musicianship, and emotion.
Most people don't know that Congo Square was originally a Muscogee ceremonial ground... in New Orleans, the birthplace of jazz.
Jazz can be a blank canvas full of possibilities.
Where I grew up, Bob Wills and his western swing was very popular. And western swing is not that far from jazz and blues.
Jazz has borrowed from other genres of music and also has lent itself to other genres of music.
Giving jazz the Congressional seal of approval is a little like making Huck Finn an honorary Boy Scout.
There is no blood in jazz drumming, and there are no bullies in jazz drumming.
I wanted to keep pushing the musical ideas I had about jazz, music from Africa and the Caribbean.
I actually find a lot of parallels in jazz and cartooning.
I listened to the radio, so I was influenced by everyone from Michael Jackson to Milli Vanilli. But thankfully my dad had a collection of Cat Stevens albums while my mom was listening to jazz.
When I was in college, I had a jazz radio show. I called it 'Excursion on a Wobbly Rail,' after a Cecil Taylor song. I used to run around the Village following Ornette Coleman wherever he played.
I grew up with all these old jazz guys in the '70s in L.A., and they grew up idolizing Charlie Parker, Charles Mingus, Lester Young - all of these incredible musicians.
I listened to classical music. I listened to jazz. I listened to everything. And I started becoming interested in the sounds of jazz. And I went to a concert of Jazz at the Philharmonic when we lived in Omaha, Nebraska, and I saw Charlie Parker play and Billie Holiday sing and Lester Young play, and that did it. I said, 'That's what I want to do.'
Playing solo with an audience for an hour and 30 minutes without a break means I have to, as the jazz cats say, get into the shed and work on my chops.
One chord is fine. Two chords are pushing it. Three chords and you're into jazz.