"I was 15 years old when I was in this band; we were called Stag. We used to wear spandex pants and no underwear - we looked like marbles smugglers."

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I have learned as much about writing about my people by listening to blues and jazz and spirituals as I have from reading novels. The understatements in the tenor saxophone of Lester Young, the crystal, haunting, forever searching sounds of John Coltrane, and the softness and violence of Count Basie's big band - all have fired my imagination as much as anything in literature.

— Ernest Gaines