Jazz Stands For Freedom.

I Prefer No One To Teach Me. I Prefer To Swing On My Own.

So Often People Will Say That I Converted To The Catholic Religion. This Is False. Although I Was Raised As A Protestant, I Was Never Baptized And Had Never Been A Member Of Any Church. I Joined The Roman Catholic Church After I Had Written My Mass To Hope!during The Night I Dreamt The Entire Lord's Prayer With Chorus And Orchestra. I Jumped Out Of Bed And Wrote Down What I Had Heard As Accurately As I Could Remember. Because Of This Event I Decided That I Might As Well Join The Catholic Church Because Someone Somewhere Was Pulling Me Toward That End.

I Knew I Wanted To Write On Religious Themes When I Was A Gi In World War Ii. I Saw And Experienced So Much Violence That I Thought I Could Express My Outrage Best With Music.

If I Told You All The People That Have Secretly Told Me I've Influenced Them, You'd Never Believe It, And You'll Never See It In Print, Either.

My Dad Was The Manager At The 45,000-acre Ranch, But He Owned His Own 1,200-acre Ranch, And I Owned Four Cattle That He Gave To Me When I Graduated From Grammar School, From The Eighth Grade. And Those Cows Multiplied, And He Kept Track Of Them For Years For Me. And That Was My Herd.