All the classic jazz players all sang and a lot of 'em sang blues.

- Mose Allison

Then I started listenin' a lot to classical composers. Piano works. Just to see what they were doin'. That sort of put me in a different groove to try to blend all that in.

- Mose Allison

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.

- Mose Allison

I'm playin' music for a certain type of person. Fortunately, there are more and more of us. At least there are more comin' to see me than there were 30 years ago or so.

- Mose Allison

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.

- Mose Allison

Traveling these days has a lot of problems and also it wears you out more.

- Mose Allison

There's a lot of terrible things goin' on all the time, but you gotta try and have some fun in the end.

- Mose Allison

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

- Mose Allison

So I'm in my 51st year of playin' mostly nightclubs. I do some concerts.

- Mose Allison

I'm playin' the music I like.

- Mose Allison

I'm always storing away phrases and ideas and things that I think might turn into songs.

- Mose Allison

I never sit down and write. I just sorta let things form in my brain.

- Mose Allison

I just have a lot off different influences.

- Mose Allison

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

- Mose Allison

At this point, I don't listen to other people too much. I'm not really that affected by anyone.

- Mose Allison

And Lennie Tristano I like a lot, I still like him.

- Mose Allison

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

- Mose Allison

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.

- Mose Allison

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.

- Mose Allison

I just try to do as good job with the material as I can and play some jazz as well, some improvised music, and do that every night. Just see where it goes.

- Mose Allison