I sang and wrote songs when I was 12 years old.

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.

I don't care what anyone does, as long as they go through the copyright office.

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

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

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

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