“The songwriters whom we think of being the greatest songwriters usually write one hit and six or seven flops.”

Everyone felt like they knew Ray Charles and in a way they did, because he was embodied by his music.

The all-time greatest Atlantic group – The Drifters

There are still many great surviving talents: Stevie Winwood. Another great talent is Stevie Wonder.

The Ertegun Jazz Hall of Fame will provide a center where the lives and the artistry of the greatest jazz musicians will be celebrated, and where people will come to learn about jazz, something to which my brother devoted his lifes work.

A singer’s biographical film should have their music and their voice.

It is a great life, this life of music.

You know you have a multimillion-seller hit – and what you’re working on suddenly has magic.

The first time I heard Clyde McPhatter singing with the Dominoes at the Apollo I just fell off my chair

I came close to signing Elvis Presley. I offered $25,000 for his contract and they asked for $45,000 and I just didn’t have the other $20,000.

At a time when it was very brave to do because Ataturk was cutting off the heads of the imams. And people thought that that was foolhardy of my father.

People like Clyde McPhatter who came out of the black churches – like Sam Cooke and Aretha Franklin – were all church singers who became great pop singers because gospel singing is very close to the blues.

Ataturk saw where history was going. He really did in Turkey what we are all hoping somebody will do in [Islamic] countries where fundamentalists thrive, that they get somebody today that has the vision that Ataturk had in 1915.

My father believed very strongly in Ataturk. Ataturk was a very powerful man and a man of great vision.

I became a jazz fan quite early and never went off the path thereafter.

Whenever a songwriter writes a big hit, then the next 20 songs they write – no matter how bad they are – get recorded.

My father was a very religious person. And he prayed five times a day. And he did that throughout his relationship with Ataturk.

The producer, director and stars are the geniuses who get the hosannas when it’s a hit. Theirs are also the heads that are mounted on spears when it’s a flop.

When you flop, that’s just another message that you don’t know how to play me. Stand up and take your medicine like a man.

An artist must be a reactionary. He has to stand out against the tenor of the age and not go flopping along.

You write a hit the same way you write a flop.

Show up for your interview wearing flip flops.

I had flops, I had success.

An artist must be a reactionary. He has to stand out against the tenor of the age and not go flopping along.

Hits and flops are overrated.