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

I do very few standards. Hardly any. Other people's tunes that I do are usually obscure tunes, for the most part, although I do a couple of Duke Ellington tunes that are well known.

I've heard some tunes in recent years that were pretty close to that same idea. The idea was you turn on the radio and you want to hear some music and up comes a commercial.

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

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

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

I started going to a piano teacher at 5 years old, but pretty soon I started picking things out on my own and stopped taking music lessons. I never could read music very well, but I've still been doing it.