“I have a West Coast rhythm section and a New York rhythm section. I've...” — Marian McPartland Quote

I have a West Coast rhythm section and a New York rhythm section. I've got them spread out all over the place.

I'd just as soon be on a good Steinway or Yamaha just as well.

Baldwin is sort of getting to be a bit funny. I don't know what happened, but a few years ago they suddenly went bankrupt and Gibson bought the whole outfit. Since then they haven't seemed to be doing an awfully good job of providing pianos.

So if I think of something in my head I don't have to do it. If I can't do I don't do it, I do something else.

By the way, I got a Grammy, which was a big thrill.

I was born on December 30, 1930 in Ningbo, a city on the east coast of China with a rich culture and over seven thousand years of history. Although it was a tumultuous age in China when I was a child, I was lucky enough to have completed a good education from primary to middle school.

I was enamored of New York City intellectual life and was really into Philip Roth because I was raised by self-loathing Midwesterners who were from southern Illinois, who felt like fish out of water when they came to the East Coast when I was a kid.

And then I went into television; and then television moved from the East Coast to Hollywood.

Writing 'Native Guard,' I didn't know I was working on a single book. I began writing that book because I was interested in the lesser-known history of these black soldiers stationed off the coast of my hometown.