I've been able to do pretty well. I don't work as many consecutive nights as I used to, but I'm still working over 100 nights a year, so that's good for me.

Everybody cryin' mercy / When they don't know the meaning of the word.

I just have a lot off different influences.

My main influences have always been the classic jazz players who sang, like Louis Armstrong and Nat King Cole and Jack Teagarden.

You always want to write the perfect song. But no one will ever write the perfect song, I guess. I would just like to write on that has all the elements of what I'm tring to do. And I'm working on it. I'm always working on it.

I never bothered about keeping track.Every now and then someone records one of my songs, and I get credit for it.

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.