There is an apprenticeship system in jazz. You teach the young ones. So even if the musicians weren't personally that likable, they felt an obligation to help the younger musicians.

Ian and Sylvia, who, when you got right down to it, were essentially country and western singers. I just recorded his Four Strong Winds. It's a wonderful song.

And then adds with a laugh, 'but in retrospect I think he may have been more sophisticated than we were.'

I cut myself off from the mainstream of jazz. It stood me in good stead later on, as a musician.

I don't think I went a year or so without a record between 1959 and 1979, sometimes two.

God has a way of telling you when to change your strings.

If I do a piece in my living room, if I practice it - and I have the tapes to prove this - it's not going to be as good as doing the same piece in front of an audience.