I was considered as a jazz man rather than as a blues player. There were no blues players-you played one sort of jazz of another sort of jazz.

If the same phrase in the same place created the right effect, I was perfectly prepared to use it every time. I wasn't worried that I wasn't improvising.

In 1940 I came across a record by Jimmy Yancey. I can't say how important that record is. From then on, all I wanted to do was play the blues.

I'm a compulsive musician, but it's also a bloody good way out of having to do anything else.

Once you became associated with a children's show, you're finished.

I must have been heavily schizophrenic all my life. The me who hears what the other me can't play is the dominant one.

In those days, between the ages of 12 and 18 you meant nothing. You were the extra place at the side table if someone came to dinner. You were of no interest to anyone.