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

My main influences have always been the classic jazz players who sang, like Louis Armstrong and Nat King Cole and Jack Teagarden.

The jazz boom was goin' on then so there was a lot happenin' in New York at that time.

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

There's a lot of terrible things goin' on all the time, but you gotta try and have some fun in the end.

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.