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1. My parents were on the Grand Ole Opry. They traveled all over the country singing hillbilly music. That’s what they called it back then. They were friends with Roy Acuff and the Delmore Brothers and the Carter Family. And all of my brothers and sisters who were older than me started on the show, after they were big enough to hold a guitar and sing.
2. I just see myself as a human being that’s concerned about life.
3. I have music inside me and I’m very lucky to be able to play music and that’s the way that I try to do it.
4. Some tracks are with quartet and some tracks are with synthesizer.
5. I always felt that I was born in the wrong era. I wanted to be friends with John Garfield, for instance.
6. I want them to come away with discovering the music inside them. And not thinking about themselves as jazz musicians, but thinking about themselves as good human beings, striving to be a great person and maybe they’ll become a great musician.
7. One of the things polio does is it takes away your energy. They don’t know very much about it. They should be a lot more aware of what polio is.
8. In L.A., I played with Joe Pass and Gabor Szabo. Mick Goodrick plays guitar in the Liberation Music Orchestra, and he’s a real special player. Then I did a duet concert with Jim Hall at the 1990 Montreal Festival.
9. Bluegrass is in my blood and in my ears.
10. That’s what I tell my students at California Institute of the Arts where I taught for 27 years. I taught them if you strive to be a good person, maybe you might become a great jazz musician.
11. I didn’t play a lot of bass as a kid, but I sang it.
12. There’s like a special group of people that come from different parts of the planet to study with me. It’s nice. I just gave a workshop in Boston at the New England Conservatory, which was really nice.
13. When you listen to a symphony orchestra, and the basses don’t — there’s no bass part, there’s not that much depth. That’s why I’m attracted to the instrument, the bass. It brings depth. It’s like playing in a rainforest.
14. I wanted to do ‘Oh Shenandoah’ because that’s the town I was born in — as a tribute to my mom and dad for giving me all this music. I don’t really sing this as a singer, because I’m not a singer. But I wanted to do it for them.
15. My roots have never left me… because the very first memory I have is my mom singing and me singing with her.
16. Mostly I play with records. I play with my friend Bill Evans.
17. I used to listen to a lot of Bach on the radio, and when the basses started to sing, it made everything complete — it made it all make sense.
18. We’re here to bring beauty to the world and make a difference in this planet. That’s what art forms are about.
19. I just sit down at the piano and rattle it off.
20. The bass, no matter what kind of music you’re playing, it just enhances the sound and makes everything sound more beautiful and full. When the bass stops, the bottom kind of drops out of everything.