To me there is far less separating blues, boogie woogie and jazz than people usually claim. When I play jazz, blues or boogie today, I draw on the same family of ideas, the ones that grew up from the 1930s onwards. The right hand works with similar rhythmic and melodic material, including swing and bebop lines, while the left hand is simply in charge of the pulse and the harmonic underpinning — which takes different shapes depending on the tune and on how I feel.

When I listen to piano giants like Oscar Peterson, Jay McShann, Gene Harris, Red Garland and more modern, bebop-dominated players like Tommy Flanagan, I hear the blues not as an occasional quotation but as the ground they stand on. On many recordings they play very jazzy blues — or, if you like, bluesy jazz — as a cornerstone of their playing.

The most obvious example is Jay McShann, in whom all these traditions already sit side by side: Charlie Parker came out of his Kansas City band. Three of his pieces are on my two records. That way of hearing has shaped my own road from blues and boogie into jazz.

Blues is not a precursor to jazz, nor a side branch. It is one of its central elements. Jazz is wider and richer and offers more room, but that does not make the blues any smaller. Both grew at the same time, in the same melting pot, out of the same sources.

These days that means a lot of stride and swing — Waller, Teddy Wilson, Nat Cole — plus blues and boogie, some gypsy jazz, and a little bebop sprinkled in here and there.

Where it comes from is in the biography; what it sounds like now is on the videos and CDs pages.