I don't know if I could write ten easy ways to connect with an audience. I know you have to believe in what you're doing, you have to believe in your music, believe in your ability, believe that what you're doing is honest and true and real.
Everything comes from one thing, everything comes from the Spirit. Jazz would not exist had it not been for gospel music, the blues would not exist had it not been for spiritual blues, which goes back to slave songs our fore fathers were singing while they were out in the field. So it's all one continuous growth from one group of people. Of course jazz now is played by various cultures and colors around the world. But the stimulus is One Voice.
In our country, the problem we have in our public school system across the country is that music and arts are on the bottom of the pole, if it's there at all. So the kids aren't exposed to music. I must speak to the music they hear at home too.
Our intention is to not only attract the hardcore jazz fan, but we're doing it in such a way that it will also be easy to take for those who are not necessarily steeped in the ways of jazz.
When I start to think about all the things, I'm doing sometimes I just have to thank the man upstairs. Because I'm doing the morning show here in Chicago 5 days a week, and I have the syndicated radio show that's been going on now for several years. In addition we are in the midst of taping 13 episodes of a television show-The Legends of Jazz: The Masters of jazz on PBS-TV.
They don't encourage quality today. When I was coming along, Columbia Records would sit with you and assume it would take two or three albums to get the act where it needed to be. Then the company would structure its promotion based on one, two or three years. They encouraged quality and innovation - that's why groups like the Beatles would use sitars, string orchestras and so forth.
