All the classic jazz players all sang and a lot of 'em sang blues.

As far as I'm concerned, the essentials of jazz are: melodic improvisation, melodic invention, swing, and instrumental personality.

At this point, I don't listen to other people too much. I'm not really that affected by anyone.

I been getting good crowds. It only took 50 years.

I do some concerts. At the moment, I'm being helped a lot by a gig I play in London, which is Pizza Express.

But I got an audience that knows what I do. They usually show up, so I usually do pretty good.

There's a few tunes of mine that don't have jokes, but most of them have a joke and they have a humorous point of view somewhere.

I sang and wrote songs when I was 12 years old.

I went through the whole number, you know. The swing era, the boogie woogie era, the bebop era. Thelonious Monk is still one of my favorites. So a lot of these people had their effect on me.

I'm always storing away phrases and ideas and things that I think might turn into songs.

I'm playin' music for a certain type of person. Fortunately, there are more and more of us. At least there are more comin' to see me than there were 30 years ago or so.

I'm playin' the music I like.

I've been able to do pretty well. I don't work as many consecutive nights as I used to, but I'm still working over 100 nights a year, so that's good for me.

I've heard some tunes in recent years that were pretty close to that same idea. The idea was you turn on the radio and you want to hear some music and up comes a commercial.

It's as much fun as it ever was, you know, once I get there. Gettin' there is a little harder.