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Condon calls his new jazz temple "Town Hall with booze." ("Our music stimulates drinking. They figure in order to understand it, they got to do like the fellow playing it.") Few people, even among fellow players, follow Condon's own habits: boilermakers (whiskey with a beer chaser) at the bar and milk at home (he thinks milk will keep away ulcers).
Though he sometimes slips into their highfalutin language, Jazzman Condon scorns the earnest critics of jazz—and once earned the gratitude of his colleagues by his cavalier attitude toward a French expert on le jazz hot. Said Eddie: "I wouldn't think of going over there and telling them how to jump on a grape."