In 1972, I recorded Gumbo, an album that was both a tribute to and my interpretation of the music I had grown up with in New Orleans in the 1940s and 1950s. I tried to keep a lot of the little changes that were characteristic of New Orleans, while working my own funknology on piano and guitar.

Everybody in my neighborhood in the '40s, they played pianos. That's how people partied. They didn't try the TV, the radio was OK, records was cool, but when people wanted to party, they got around a piano. My mother played piano, my sister played. I've been around a lot of piano all my life.

See, I dont know nothing about singing. I never wanted to be a frontman. Frontmen had big egos and was always crazy and aggravating. I just never thought that was a good idea.

I started out with the guitar and was a studio musician back in the 50s, and then got shot in my finger.

In the network's mind there are no limits.

When I was a little bitty kid, my aunt showed me how to play a little boogie. It took me years. I had to play the left-hand part with two hands, because my hands was so little. Then as I grew up and I learned how to play the left-hand part with one hand, she showed me how to play the right-hand part, and et cetera. My Uncle Joe showed me how to play a little bit different boogie stuff. I had people in my family that was professional musicians, but I just wasn't interested in what they did. I wasn't very open-minded to a lot of music that I'd be more open to today.

I think that any of the places that's cut off from money, things come up, what the people have to rely on.