“I think having one’s own sound in a sense is the most fundamental kind of identity in music. But it’s a very touchy thing how one arrives at that. It has to be something that comes from inside, and it’s a long-term process. It’s a product of a total personality. Why one person is going to have it and another person isn’t, I don’t know why exactly. I think sometimes the people I seem to like most as musical artists are people who have had to — they’re like late arrivers. Many of them are late arrivers. They’ve had to work a lot harder in a sense to get facility, to get fluency, and like that. Whereas you see a lot of young talents that have a great deal of fluidity and fluency and facility, and they never really carry it anyplace. Because in a way they’re not aware enough of what they’re doing.
There are certain artists — Miles Davis is a late arriver in a sense. I mean, he arrived early, but you couldn’t just hear his development until he finally really arrived later. And Tony Bennett is another one that’s just always worked and dug and tried to improve, and finally, what he does as a straight singer has a kind of a dimension in it and is able to transport the listener way beyond other singers in his category. Or Thad Jones is another one that I can enjoy listening to play. I enjoy listening to players that think for themselves, especially. I mean, you could line up a hundred players that all more or less sound alike, and they’re all good players, and I can even enjoy listening to them. But if just one of them thinks for himself, he stands out like a neon sign. And it’s so refreshing to hear someone who thinks for himself.
Now at the same time, the danger of a person grabbing a concept like this is that they think thinking for themselves is being eccentric or being rebellious or being — especially of being “different” — and that’s not it.
The idea is to try to be real and right in the core, right in the middle, but still be an individual enough to handle the material in your own way.”