Jazz is America's own. It is played and listened to by all peoples - in harmony together. Pigmentation differences have no place... as in genuine democracy, only performance counts.
The whole reason for Jazz at the Philharmonic was to take it to places where I could break down segregation.
If you don't get substantially what you want, be ready to walk. And don't look back.
You’re probably smarter than you present yourself.
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.
For years, Jazz At The Philharmonic albums were the only ones of their kind.
At Verve, my bookkeeper would invariably say, 'Well, why do you want to put out Roy Eldridge?' Or 'Why do you want to put out Ben Webster? They don't sell.' And I'd say, 'Well, whether they sell or not, they're important, they should be recorded and they're what Verve stands for, so we don't have to discuss that any further.
I don't want to sound as if I'm doing something tremendously special. But I am a jazz fan.
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.
There are very few groups that really stay together. The leaders of groups make enough money to be able to afford to work a maximum of 35-40 weeks a year.
I find myself more at peace when I live in Europe.
I'm concerned with trend. I don't know where jazz fans will come from 20 years from now.
Jazz was uplifted by what I did.
I'm talking as a professional impresario. I'm not judging anybody at all.
When I was doing jazz concerts in America, I would use the biggest names I could find.
My function at Verve was that of a genuine producer in artists and repertoire.
I allowed artists to play for as long as they felt they could justifiably continue to create.
If you look at my audiences, even in Europe, they're hardly teenagers.
I still continue to do at least four concert tours a year, and in many cases, as many as six.
As long as we're in a democracy, I have to give what I think the majority of people will enjoy.
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.
Amsterdam must have more than a million people. But the only area where jazz is really profitable and successful in an economic sense is in Japan. That's because they haven't been exposed enough.
If I were to put on Barbra Streisand and Duke Ellington, one might say the combination isn't good.
My juices needed restoring. I needed a sabbatical from the record business.
The public, hearing pop music, is, without knowing it, also soaking up jazz.
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