To sing the ballad with a knowingness about what you are talking about. If it's somebody else's lyric, and the message is a little unusual for you, it requires that you learn that new message.
Obviously given good health, and a continuing audience and a record company that allows me to do music. So given those things yes, I'm introducing some new music that people haven't really heard me do in quite this fashion.
These songs are old friends I have entertained myself with when I'm washing the dishes, driving to the store and walking down the aisles. The ones that you sing when you're driving in the car and as a singer you always go back to them.
That's the way I try to live. I think it's the only way for human beings at this point in our evolution as souls, where everyone in their lifetime is going through stuff.
Al and Tommy and I sharing the biggest laugh because it was predicted by everything we did in the first three or four records in my career. It was predicted in the grooves that we would be here sometime later on down the road.
Jazz brought this sense of democracy where four guys come together and your name may be on the marquee, but in this moment, when you're the soloist, it's you, and we follow you. We follow you.
I kind of knew something was going on, and my older brothers and sisters were singing be-boppish kinds of stuff in the living room, and I was listening. I started singing, warmer than a summer night, at seven or eight years old.
I sat on the piano bench next to my mother in church. Something happened before I set foot on this planet. I was crawling around inside of her. She was a church pianist. My dad was a brilliant singer. I was hearing it.
Once you discover that you can, then you must. And it's not easy. You have to take direct steps. You really have to count your blessings and you have to make a decided effort to not get seduced by the blues.
I think a singer is an athlete. I've always tried to stay fit. Until my knee said, "Uh-uh," I was jogging. Then I started walking. They don't like walking a lot, but I'll push them.
I watched Elvis Presley become - I listened to Elvis Presley. I watched Chuck Berry become. I listened to Little Richard. I heard that music, and it was part of my upbringing.