Sneak Peek: Willard Jenkins Sneak Peek

Willard Jenkins: Well, first and foremost, I'm proud to be receiving the A.B. Spellman NEA Jazz Masters Award for Advocacy, because A.B. Spellman is a hero of mine from writing and from arts administration perspective. See, there's a kidship there when I think about the fact that I used to read A.B. Spellman in “Downbeat” and “Metronome”, et cetera, and then A.B. Spellman became this wonderful arts administrator and a senior director at the National Endowment for the Arts and such to the point that when the NEA determined to have an advocate category, they named it after A.B. Spellman. So that's a wonderful thing to me. This whole NEA Jazz Masters Award has been just so refreshing and so wonderful. Just delighted to have this level of recognition.