I may be prejudiced, but I believe that jazz music has the strongest healing potential, and it's not just because I play it and love it so much. I feel that it's the improvisation in jazz that makes it so strong as a healing tool, what each individual gives to a tune from their heart and their soul when they take a solo. It's all spontaneous, and it's all love, and from the heart.

Good Lord's been kind to me, that's all I can say. I wake up in the morning with music in my head a lot of times. I won't say every morning, but I wake up in the morning sometimes with eight bars in my head and I just go to the piano.

I will search for hidden talents that I didn't know I had and do my best to cultivate them. I am grateful for each day, and I will try to use each day as a stepping stone to greater achievements.

We all have to open our minds, stretch forth, take chances and venture out musically to try and arrive at something new and different.

They didn't dictate to me as to what kind of music that they wanted me to play or what tunes, what musicians that I was going to use. They let me do my thing. That's one reason I stayed there for twenty-eight years.

Basically my influences have been American influences. It's been blues, gospel, swing era music, bebop music, Broadway show music, classical music.

I may be prejudiced, but I believe that jazz music has the strongest healing potential, and it's not just because I play it and love it so much. I feel that it's the improvisation in jazz that makes it so strong as a healing tool, what each individual gives to a tune from their heart and their soul when they take a solo. It's all spontaneous, and it's all love, and from the heart.