I'm happy whenever anybody does my material. I don't care what they do with it. I do what I want to with other people's songs.

And Lennie Tristano I like a lot, I still like him.

The thing of playin' and singin' never bothered me.

I finally decided if I was going to make a living, I was gonna have to come to New York.

I haven't stopped and I don't plan on stoppin' any time soon.

I went through the whole number, you know. The swing era, the boogie woogie era, the bebop era. Thelonious Monk is still one of my favorites. So a lot of these people had their effect on me.

I was taking chemical engineering. But I went into the army after that. When I came out of the army, I was a different person. I met a lot of good jazz players in the army.