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

I just have a lot off different influences.

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.

My dad was a self-taught stride piano player. The myth is - I don't whether it's true or not - that he taught himself to play by watching a player piano.

I'm improvising all the time. Everything I do is improvised. On the piano, at least.

I don't remember any impression [from blues].The blues was just everywhere in the Mississippi Delta. It was mostly black sharecroppers living there, and there was a lot of blues around. Sometimes the guys would sing the blues in the fields, working.

The jazz boom was goin' on then so there was a lot happenin' in New York at that time.