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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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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.
True
Stride
Play
Piano
Self
Myth
Dad
Watching
Player
Taught
Whether

More quotes by 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'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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[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 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
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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
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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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So I'm in my 51st year of playin' mostly nightclubs. I do some concerts.
Mose Allison
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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
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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 things that really matter don't mix with idle chatter.
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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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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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
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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
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All the classic jazz players all sang and a lot of 'em sang blues.
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 never bothered about keeping track.Every now and then someone records one of my songs, and I get credit for it.
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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As far as I'm concerned, the essentials of jazz are: melodic improvisation, melodic invention, swing, and instrumental personality.
Mose Allison