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

Mose Allison

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Mose Allison
Age: 89 †
Born: 1927
Born: November 11
Died: 2016
Died: November 15
Jazz Musician
Jazz Pianist
Pianist
Singer
Singer-Songwriter
Tippo
Mississippi
Mose John Allison
Jr.
Blues
Classic
Players
Jazz
Player
Sang
Ems

More quotes by Mose Allison

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I didn't feel anything [frustraiting]. I just kept working 110 or 120 nights a year.
Mose Allison
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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
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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
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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
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As far as I'm concerned, the essentials of jazz are: melodic improvisation, melodic invention, swing, and instrumental personality.
Mose Allison
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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
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I sang and wrote songs when I was 12 years old.
Mose Allison
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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
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The things that really matter don't mix with idle chatter.
Mose Allison
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So I'm in my 51st year of playin' mostly nightclubs. I do some concerts.
Mose Allison
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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
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[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
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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
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The thing of playin' and singin' never bothered me.
Mose Allison
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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
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I'm always storing away phrases and ideas and things that I think might turn into songs.
Mose Allison
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I'm improvising all the time. Everything I do is improvised. On the piano, at least.
Mose Allison
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I finally decided if I was going to make a living, I was gonna have to come to New York.
Mose Allison
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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
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The jazz boom was goin' on then so there was a lot happenin' in New York at that time.
Mose Allison