I heard Sidney Bechet play a Duke Ellington piece and fell in love with the soprano saxophone.
The soprano has all those other instruments in it. It's got the soprano song voice, flute, violin, clarinet, and tenor elements and can even approach the baritone in intensity.
I've been working on the soprano saxophone for 40 years, and the possibilities are astounding. It's up to you, the only limit is the imagination.
The potential for the saxophone is unlimited.
I fell in love with jazz when I was 12 years old from listening to Duke Ellington and hearing a lot of jazz in New York on the radio.
I started in New Orleans music and played all through the history of jazz.
I still love the whole history of jazz. The old things sound better than ever.
I wanted to be a pianist but it just wasn't my thing. I guess I wanted to stand up rather than sit down.
I've always been extremely lucky in playing with great people who knew much more than I did. That's how I got from there to here.
I've performed solo for 20 years now, but I don't do much of it, because if you only play alone, you go crazy and out of tune and play foolish music.
If you have music you want to play that no one asks you to play, you have to go out and find where you can play it. It's called do or die.
If you're trying to invent something new, you're going to reach a lot of discouraging points, and most people give up.
It's very important to go through periods where you sound just rotten and you know it, and you have to persevere or give up.
Jazz is people's music, a collectivity.
Kenny G, I have to be grateful to him for proving that the instrument can be played all different kinds of ways.
Register is very important. Music sounds best in a certain register.
Some people really want to play Mozart and be just performers. I was more interested in invention.
The more original something is, the more of a threat it seems until the people catch up with it. That happened with Thelonious Monk. It happened with anybody who is really original.
The saxophone is a very interesting machine, but I'm more interested in music.
They call me before they go into production, when they have a prototype, and they call legitimate saxophonists, too. As opposed to the other kind.
