"Quincy Jones' autobiography Q is very good. Because he's a master at music, he's one of our greatest composers and its good for him to have a book and tell the good ole days when he was with Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Sarah Vaughan and Ray Charles. The reason he got to work with so many people was because he was one of the few musicians around who could write out the arrangements. He was in everybody's session. He learned so much."

"This is a song that mixes humor and sadness beautifully. My wife and I went to see Jason in Red Bank, NJ at the Count Basie Theatre a couple years ago and this was a song I wasn’t familiar with a the time but it immediately registered with us both. I went home and found the record it was on and I think it’s a heartbreaking song with a little bit of laughter to ease the blow. It will also make you think twice about covering Hendrix… you never know who’s watching."

"I bought this at university, mainly because of the cover art, I admit. I had a very small record collection then. You did in those days, and because you didn't have a lot, you'd play every record again and again. My dad, Tom, was a bandleader, so there was a lot of jazz in the house. He liked people like Count Basie and Woody Herman, but he stopped at Coltrane. He found the modernism of it difficult, but I loved it. It felt like a big thing for me, when I was a precocious teenager. The first jazz I had found for myself!

This is a real fork-in-the-road album for jazz, too, from 1958, a proper boundary between hard bop and the future. The three-part horn arrangements are something I tried to emulate on the first track of [Everything But The Girl's 1984 album] Each And Every One, too – in my own way of course. The album was only his second, and him early on as a session leader. There's so much life in it, and so many ideas. 
"

"This goes up to the Chicago stuff. When all the Mississippi guys made it up to Chicagoland, the Chess Brothers started picking them up and made it possible for them to record some stunning material. “There’s so much good stuff here that I don’t even know where to begin. Louisiana Blues, Rollin’ And Tumblin’, Long Distance Call, I Can’t Be Satisfied – all of these recordings were turning points in that, once electricity entered the picture, bands with three and four people in them could do battle with Duke Ellington and Count Basie and 10-piece horn sections. “Muddy Waters had a very distinctive guitar tone. When he played a Gibson Les Paul goldtop, you could really identify the sound, and you knew who it was. Compared to BB or Freddy or Albert, his playing might not have been so fanciful, but his licks were stinging and ferocious. And he laid down a lot of Delta-based slide guitar, too. Just because he was in Chicago, he didn’t leave his humble beginnings behind."

"My dad used to sing Sinatra songs all the time around the house. He used also sing Burt Bacharach and different things like that. And you grow up with your parents' music whether you want to or not. But in a bizarre way, my dad was one of those guys who would just constantly sing – I don't mean while shopping in the Co-Op or whatever – but he would just sing at home all the time. Actually, I just did a thing with Ronnie Scott's big band at Cheltenham Jazz Festival the other week and I remember those songs the way my dad sang them which means I remember them with completely wrong lyrics – he didn't know the actual words! He used to that with lots of things – he'd sing 'Jerusalem' with the line "and did those feet, those WHACKING great feet" for some reason! I'm sure a lot of dads and mums used to do it. This particular album was produced by Quincy Jones and features the Count Basie orchestra. So it's meant to have been a golden era of Sinatra doing the Vegas years because it was still in the part when songs were arranged with a big band and orchestra. But then you remember Quincy Jones produced Michael Jackson – so there's a weird connection there. I used to speak to jazzers about songs we were doing and they would ask 'are we doing the Sands version?' – I needed to find out what that actually meant! But it's just amazing to be in that room for a second. Some of that – some of the Elvis in Vegas stuff too – becomes mythology. A lifestyle. Like Elton John or Celine Dion although I don't mean that in a derogatory way. And I certainly don't think it's derogatory now. It affords people to put on a show they couldn't possibly do anywhere else. they can afford to go completely over the top with it. Would I like a Vegas period? I'd LOVE a Vegas period! Bring it on! I don't think I have the material – I've seen Elton do these massive three hour stint gigs but he has the songs to back them up. I just don't think I've got that material. Although maybe I could do something in Vegas though…"