The idea was I'd never amount to anything in music, The theme there was that I was talented, but I wouldn't work hard enough to do anything with it.

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

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.

The jazz boom was goin' on then so there was a lot happenin' in New York at that time.

[The producer told me:] "We can try one more record, and we'll see how that one does." Those records never did anything. My music never got mentioned. My color got mentioned.

I don't sit down to write a song; they just come to me from something that somebody says, or something in the news. The punchline comes to me, and I go over it in my head and get the song form. I hadn't been doing that a lot.

I haven't stopped and I don't plan on stoppin' any time soon.