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.

But I got an audience that knows what I do. They usually show up, so I usually do pretty good.

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.

When I have to compete with John Coltrane and Miles Davis and Louie Armstrong on iTunes, which I'm doing now, that's a problem. That means that jazz is not being heard by younger audiences.

I saw a very good Hollywood film the other day. It was about Cole Porter.

My style is Edie Sedgwick meets Grace Jones, or Audrey Hepburn meets Salt 'n' Pepa. Strong and feisty but still classic.