I have many conversations about jazz.  I'm still sampling styles (for want of a better word) and Johnny Hodges is the current preference.  I find I can't travel too far in a 'free' direction - because it often, despite what anyone says, seems to me to lack discipline (if only Elvin Jones had shown more restraint when playing live with Coltrane, for example).  I find myself, increasingly, going back to the great beboppers - including Anita O'Day - because they had blues in their blood but knew how to interpret either the WASP or the Jew to the best of their ability.  I have found myself, for the best part of thirty five years now, charmed by wordsmiths like Cole Porter and Rodgers and Hart.  'Texture, melody and structure'; the pleasure to be found in the female voice; the cool genius of a Chet, a Mulligan, an Art Pepper, a Lester Young or Ben Webster.  But, most of all, keeping an open mind and experimenting seems to be key.