Dave van ronk

One of my earliest memories... I knew three full verses of the Star Spangled Banner when I was seven or eight years old. And one of the nuns discovered this phenomenon and I was actually sent around...

By the mid-70s, I wanted to get out of the business. I was tired anyway.

If I do a piece in my living room, if I practice it - and I have the tapes to prove this - it's not going to be as good as doing the same piece in front of an audience.

When you're working in front of an audience, you have incentive to excel.

There is an apprenticeship system in jazz. You teach the young ones. So even if the musicians weren't personally that likable, they felt an obligation to help the younger musicians.

If you asked anybody in my family, they would have very stridently proclaimed themselves middle class. My mother and father were separated, so he doesn't count.

I'm a very, very stubborn man.

Most of what I listen to now is mainstream jazz from 1935 right up to and including early bebop and cool jazz.

I'm an exhibitionist, I was an exhibitionist as a kid.

Honesty is the cruelest game of all, because not only can you hurt someone - and hurt them to the bone - you can feel self-righteous about it at the same time.