I never sit down and write. I just sorta let things form in my brain.
I'm improvising all the time. Everything I do is improvised. On the piano, at least.
The thing of playin' and singin' never bothered me.
So I'm in my 51st year of playin' mostly nightclubs. I do some concerts.
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 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.