When you're playing live, those people who you're trying to please and reach, they're right there giving you feedback. And you don't get that feedback in the studio.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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