1.
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
2.
All the classic jazz players all sang and a lot of 'em sang blues.
Mose Allison
3.
Everybody cryin' mercy / When they don't know the meaning of the word.
Mose Allison
4.
The things that really matter don't mix with idle chatter.
Mose Allison
5.
Ever since the world ended, I don't go out as much
Mose Allison
6.
I have no idea what I'm doin'. I've never seen me.
Mose Allison
7.
I been getting good crowds. It only took 50 years.
Mose Allison
8.
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
9.
As far as I'm concerned, the essentials of jazz are: melodic improvisation, melodic invention, swing, and instrumental personality.
Mose Allison
10.
I do very few standards. Hardly any. Other people's tunes that I do are usually obscure tunes, for the most part, although I do a couple of Duke Ellington tunes that are well known.
Mose Allison
11.
I'm always storing away phrases and ideas and things that I think might turn into songs.
Mose Allison
12.
My main influences have always been the classic jazz players who sang, like Louis Armstrong and Nat King Cole and Jack Teagarden.
Mose Allison
13.
So I'm in my 51st year of playin' mostly nightclubs. I do some concerts.
Mose Allison
14.
The thing of playin' and singin' never bothered me.
Mose Allison
15.
I never sit down and write. I just sorta let things form in my brain.
Mose Allison
16.
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.
Mose Allison
17.
I haven't stopped and I don't plan on stoppin' any time soon.
Mose Allison
18.
You always want to write the perfect song. But no one will ever write the perfect song, I guess. I would just like to write on that has all the elements of what I'm tring to do. And I'm working on it. I'm always working on it.
Mose Allison
19.
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
20.
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
21.
I do some concerts. At the moment, I'm being helped a lot by a gig I play in London, which is Pizza Express.
Mose Allison
22.
I'm happy whenever anybody does my material. I don't care what they do with it. I do what I want to with other people's songs.
Mose Allison
23.
And Lennie Tristano I like a lot, I still like him.
Mose Allison
24.
I never thought I was playing black music. I was just playing music, the stuff I liked. I sang blues at parties and things when I was a kid.
Mose Allison
25.
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.
Mose Allison
26.
The jazz boom was goin' on then so there was a lot happenin' in New York at that time.
Mose Allison
27.
I just have a lot off different influences.
Mose Allison
28.
I finally decided if I was going to make a living, I was gonna have to come to New York.
Mose Allison
29.
I start out with words, with the idea, the line. Then after I get a line or two, I try to find what melodic line those lines would be suited to. As soon as I find the form I can finish the song in my head.
Mose Allison
30.
[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.
Mose Allison
31.
I was taking chemical engineering. But I went into the army after that. When I came out of the army, I was a different person. I met a lot of good jazz players in the army.
Mose Allison
32.
I never bothered about keeping track.Every now and then someone records one of my songs, and I get credit for it.
Mose Allison
33.
I don't care what anyone does, as long as they go through the copyright office.
Mose Allison
34.
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.
Mose Allison
35.
I started going to a piano teacher at 5 years old, but pretty soon I started picking things out on my own and stopped taking music lessons. I never could read music very well, but I've still been doing it.
Mose Allison
36.
A young man ain't nothin' in the world these days
Mose Allison
37.
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
38.
I have lots of CDs that came out at one time or another, and according to the statements I've gotten, no one's buying them.I figured there's no need making a new CD. There are plenty of mine out there, and none of them are selling.
Mose Allison
39.
I didn't feel anything [frustraiting]. I just kept working 110 or 120 nights a year.
Mose Allison
40.
I'm not inspired by songwriting at all; that took place years ago. I'm pretty well established, as far as my influences go. I don't listen to music anymore. It all sounds the same to me.
Mose Allison
41.
I told [my daughter Amy] at an early age that she had a good ear. But I didn't influence her music much. She's pretty much developed her style on her own, and she's a talented songwriter.
Mose Allison
42.
I'm improvising all the time. Everything I do is improvised. On the piano, at least.
Mose Allison
43.
I don't remember any impression [from blues].The blues was just everywhere in the Mississippi Delta. It was mostly black sharecroppers living there, and there was a lot of blues around. Sometimes the guys would sing the blues in the fields, working.
Mose Allison
44.
I'm playin' the music I like.
Mose Allison
45.
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.
Mose Allison
46.
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.
Mose Allison
47.
If it's worth remembering, I'll remember it. If something keeps coming back, if I keep thinking of that phrase, if I see manifestations of it at different times and different places, then I feel it's worth making a song out of.
Mose Allison
48.
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
49.
I sang and wrote songs when I was 12 years old.
Mose Allison
