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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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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.
Well
Teacher
Going
Started
Years
Pretty
Picking
Things
Read
Stopped
Never
Stills
Piano
Still
Lessons
Music
Soon
Wells
Taking

More quotes by Mose Allison

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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
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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 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 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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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
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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 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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[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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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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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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Ever since the world ended, I don't go out as much
Mose Allison
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I just have a lot off different influences.
Mose Allison
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The thing of playin' and singin' never bothered me.
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 didn't feel anything [frustraiting]. I just kept working 110 or 120 nights a year.
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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I'm always storing away phrases and ideas and things that I think might turn into songs.
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