You haven’t been told before that you’re phonies. You’re here because jazz has publicity, jazz is popular…You like to associate yourself with this sort of thing. But it doesn’t make you a connoisseur of the art because you follow it around…A blind man can go to an exhibition of Picasso and Kline, and not even see their works, and comment behind dark glasses, ‘Wow! They’re the swingingest paintings ever, crazy!’ Well, so can you. You’ve got your dark glasses and clogged up ears.

Play that trumpet solo again…I would say it’s Clifford Brown. A lot of people who don’t know Fats Navarro would have to like Clifford. I hear the kind of crying feeling, the soul that you got from Fats. Now I wouldn’t buy it because it was Clifford; the fact that somebody’s dead doesn’t change anything for me. I’m going to die, too.

Rudy van Gelder makes those kind of records. He tries to change people’s tones. I’ve seen him do it; I’ve seen him do it; I’ve seen him take Thad Jones and the way he sets him up at the mike, he can change the whole sound. That’s why I never go to him; he ruined my bass sound.

Is that stereo? Yes…That’s too bad. And the piano player—he sounded like this was his first record date and his last one, so he wants to get everything in and plays all the notes he can in that solo, in the style of Horace Silver; and it could be Horace, I don’t know. Maybe he was very anxious that day. How could I know if I don’t listen to those cats anymore?

It doesn’t matter about the key he’s playing in—he’s got a percussional sound, like a cat on a whole lot of bongos. He’s brought a thing in—it’s not new. I won’t say who started it, but whoever started it, people overlooked it. It’s like not having anything to do with what’s around you, and being right in your own world. You can’t put you finger on what he’s doing.

It’s like organized disorganization, or playing wrong right. And it gets to you emotionally, like a drummer. That’s what Coleman means to me.