Caravan

Some of the lyrics are so cheesy. [Perdido and Caravan] are particularly bad, and I just thought maybe that's a way of getting around it. With Caravan, it's such an interesting, mysterious and exotic melody, but when you put these dopey words with it, it kind of spoils it for me. I thought about Sussan Deyhim, and she liked the idea of translating it [into Farsi]. So I think now both the words and the melody sound exotic – unless you're Iranian, maybe.

— interview with The Age (AU), 13 July 2012

I Ain't Got Nothin' But The Blues

(Asked about the session with Sharon Jones...)
It went very, very well. I'm very grateful to her, actually, because it was the last thing we did, the last recording we did with her. She kind of came in at the last minute and saved the day. She wasn't my first choice for that song. I'm not going to say who the first choice was, but it didn't work out very well. But I wish I'd gone straight to Sharon first.

— interview with Classic Pop (UK), April/May 2016

I Got It Bad (And That Ain't Good)

[This one] was difficult for me because I didn't think I could sing it. We went through a process of trying to get several other people to sing it. But I guess it was fate, or something, because several people were unavailable. Everyone kept telling me that I should sing it, so I ended up singing it, and I think it's OK.

— interview with Huffington Post (US), 2 May 2012

(Asked what innovation during this project he's most proud of...)
[...] bringing in some counterpoint – on I Got It Bad there's both a fugue and a canon.

— interview with Ralph Farris of Ethel, 7 July 2012

It Don't Mean A Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)

(Talking about teaming up with Iggy Pop...)
We met once when we were both staying in the same hotel on tour, and we had a couple of beers. I found him to be a very interesting and quite charming guy. And a very smart guy – more open-minded than I think people realise. I heard his voice in my mind singing that song. And I thought, 'I wonder if he'd like to do it?' And he did!

— Rolling Stone (US), 31 Mar. 2012

The challenge on this track was to create something that swings like hell, but isn't actually 'swing.' Iggy found the vocal challenging at first, too – as he said, 'This shit ain't for sissies' – but it all came together and we had a lot of fun.

— Rolling Stone (US), 25 June 2012

On the album

I revere Duke Ellington, but I didn't want this to be a reverent album. Ellington didn't consider his own arrangements to be sacred. He constantly reworked them, sometimes quite radically. So I think my approach is in the spirit of the man himself.

— interview with somethingelsereviews.com, 26 Mar. 2012

No horns. That was a rule I made fairly early on, because the last thing I wanted to do was do something that just sounded like watered down Ellington. There's just no point. Quite a few jazz people have done Ellington tribute records, and some of them are very good, but they tend to sound like second-hand Ellington.

— Rolling Stone (US), 31 Mar. 2012