My music is homegrown from the garden of New Orleans. Music is everything to me short of breathing. Music also has a role to lift you up - not to be escapist but to take you out of misery.
And do respect the women of the world; remember you all had mothers.
To get to New Orleans you don't pass through anywhere else. That geographical location, being aloof, lets it hold onto the ritual of its own pace more than other places that have to keep up with the progress.
When you're playing live, those people who you're trying to please and reach, they're right there giving you feedback. And you don't get that feedback in the studio.
As an early child, I tried to play every kind of music that I heard. I thought everyone was doing that.
To travel and to get around different places, especially in station wagons, you could really see America.
As a young child, I thought that all pianists played everything. I mean, I thought anything on piano - any piano music, all pianists played it.
I never planned on being a live performer. My whole forte was about being in the studio, producing, playing the piano on recording sessions. I was all about the studio.
Whenever I wrote songs - particularly back then - it would always be for a particular artist.
The mother-in-laws themselves weren't natural jokes but most comedians used to use that.
To play with a band all of the time, just about nightly, was good for me because I wrote lots of arrangements and I got a lot of my transposition and chords ironed out.
