Ever since the world ended, I don't go out as much

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.

As far as I'm concerned, the essentials of jazz are: melodic improvisation, melodic invention, swing, and instrumental personality.

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

A young man ain't nothin' in the world these days

I never thought I was playing black music. I was just playing music, the stuff I liked. I sang blues at parties and things when I was a kid.

I don't sit down to write a song; they just come to me from something that somebody says, or something in the news. The punchline comes to me, and I go over it in my head and get the song form. I hadn't been doing that a lot.