Bebop didn’t have the humanity of Duke Ellington. It didn’t even have that recognizable thing. Bird and Diz were great, fantastic, challenging – but they weren’t sweet.
In high school I was best in music class on the trumpet, but the prizes went to the boys with blue eyes. I made up my mind to outdo anybody white on my horn.
I used to enjoy all the white bands when I was a kid listening to the radio. But the record companies, they take music and label it – like, they say “rock”. Because the white singers can’t sound like James Brown, they call him “soul”. They’ve been doing that for years. That’s the prejudice crap.
