As far as I'm concerned, the essentials of jazz are: melodic improvisation, melodic invention, swing, and instrumental personality. |
I just try to do as good job with the material as I can and play some jazz as well, some improvised music, and do that every night. Just see where it goes. |
Traveling these days has a lot of problems and also it wears you out more. |
I have no idea what I'm doin'. I've never seen me. |
I just have a lot off different influences. |
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. |
All the classic jazz players all sang and a lot of 'em sang blues. |
The jazz boom was goin' on then so there was a lot happenin' in New York at that time. |
I'm playin' the music I like. |
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. |
The thing of playin' and singin' never bothered me. |
I can't judge my own stuff. That's for others. But those are the three things that I admire. |
It's as much fun as it ever was, you know, once I get there. Gettin' there is a little harder. |
I sang and wrote songs when I was 12 years old. |
At this point, I don't listen to other people too much. I'm not really that affected by anyone. |
There's a lot of terrible things goin' on all the time, but you gotta try and have some fun in the end. |
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 do very few standards. Hardly any. Other people's tunes that I do are usually obscure tunes, for the most part, although I do a couple of Duke Ellington tunes that are well known. |
And Lennie Tristano I like a lot, I still like him. |
My main influences have always been the classic jazz players who sang, like Louis Armstrong and Nat King Cole and Jack Teagarden. |