You don't ever get a chance to play what you really do; and if you do, you notice that you can't play, because you haven't been. And often I'd be ask… - Clare Fischer

That's wild! I'll start off with five stars and work backwards from there. Now there, to me, is the most perfect band in existence, whether you're thinking of it orchestrationally or in terms of Duke's immensely creative writing. I can't think of anybody I admire more than this man; nobody could even be compared with him, except Billy Strayhorn. Duke does something with this old, tired instrumentation of trumpets, trombones and saxophones, and he has a perfect way of utilizing the men's specific sounds. Anything he plays is a work of art. The band is out of tune, for instance, and it doesn't even matter. They almost have their own brand of intonation. Duke can take an exotic-sounding idea and create something – you might call it sophisticated crudity. It gives both the qualities that I look for – an earthy quality and the sophisticated quality.

In 1964, my first steady job in the studios in this city was with the NBC Orchestra playing for the Andy Williams Show. So who comes on that show but Antonio Carlos Jobim. And he comes over to the orchestra, doesn’t say a word to me. He sits down to the piano and starts playing a bossa I had written that the Hi-Lo’s recorded. I mean, he’s heard of me?''

How did I get to Lee Konitz, when everybody else was doing Charlie Parker? The sound, for one thing, the notes that he played—man, it just knocked me off my feet! When Lee was first playing, God he was inventive! I worked out so many solos of his off the records, from when he began recording with Tristano and Warne Marsh in 1949. I listened to Charlie Parker but I was not a fan—he was repeating himself too much.