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There are two ways to deal with racism in music. One is to channel your anger into the music and be a reporter of your culture. Often you are preaching to the choir. If the person who is a racist is not a fan of your music, then your anger is not going to matter to them. If a racist likes your music, I have a feeling they can turn it off.

In the fall of 2015, I was talking to my co-author, Dave Lisik, about the fact that the band’s 50th anniversary was approaching. I said that somebody should put together a web site that featured the band’s history, personnel, discography, photos, etc.

Dave said, “Why just a web site? We should put together a book with all of that in it.” I was in the middle of finishing up another book project and thought there was no way I would have the energy to jump right into another project. I also thought that there might be too many moving parts and too many people that we would have to rely upon to get something like this done. But luckily, Dave was persistent and kept asking me until I agreed to do it.

I set some challenges for myself, as I always like to do, with complex tunes like “Conception” (George Shearing) and “Humpty Dumpty” (Chick Corea). But mostly I wanted this to be a record where we could relax and blow on a very high level.

In Italy everybody kept telling me the an Italian singer couldn’t have success singing in English and the next think I know is that one day my record company called me saying one of my songs was playing at radios. I believe that the backbone of every success is perseverance.

For a long time the internet was the bane of the music industry, and for years it struggled to find effective ways to harness it. Upcoming musicians have particularly found it difficult to raise their profile in the digital age. The chances of creating a platform from where they can try to break into the industry have become smaller as the field becomes more crowded.