l'd been getting bored with the stereotyped changes that were being used all the time at the time, and I kept thinking there's bound to be something else. I could hear it sometimes but I couldn't play it.... I found that by using the higher intervals of a chord as a melody line and backing them with appropriately related changes I could play the thing I'd been hearing. I came alive.

On his personal stylistic breakthrough, quoted in Hear Me Talkin' to Ya (1955) edited by Nat Hentoff and Nat Shapiro,. p 354