My music is homegrown from the garden of New Orleans. Music is everything to me short of breathing. Music also has a role to lift you up - not to be escapist but to take you out of misery.

I never planned on being a live performer. My whole forte was about being in the studio, producing, playing the piano on recording sessions. I was all about the studio.

As an early child, I tried to play every kind of music that I heard. I thought everyone was doing that.

The mother-in-laws themselves weren't natural jokes but most comedians used to use that.

And do respect the women of the world; remember you all had mothers.

To play with a band all of the time, just about nightly, was good for me because I wrote lots of arrangements and I got a lot of my transposition and chords ironed out.

To travel and to get around different places, especially in station wagons, you could really see America.