There's a few tunes of mine that don't have jokes, but most of them have a joke and they have a humorous point of view somewhere.

I didn't feel anything [frustraiting]. I just kept working 110 or 120 nights a year.

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.

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

It was the British rockers that saved me. They brought me to a different generation altogether [in the 60th]. The Who and The Yardbirds and Georgie Fame and Van Morrison and all those people. The only person who ever did my songs in [ U.S] country was Bonnie Raitt.

I remember the first check I got from The Who's recording [of "Young Man Blues"]. I'd been getting checks for $10 and $15 and so forth, and this one was for a much larger amount than that. I thought it was a mistake.

I went through the whole number, you know. The swing era, the boogie woogie era, the bebop era. Thelonious Monk is still one of my favorites. So a lot of these people had their effect on me.