'If I'd known I was going to live this long I'd have taken better care of myself,' the great ragtime pianist and Broadway composer Eubie Blake once said.
Blake died in 1983 at the age of either 96 or 100, depending on who you believe, and he was playing almost to the end.
Encouragingly, Dave Brubeck, who knew Blake in the 1970s, appears determined to follow his example.
'There was an event that took place in Harlem to honour Duke Ellington,' recalls Brubeck in the liner notes to his latest CD for Telarc, Indian Summer. 'For some reason Duke could not be there, so they asked Eubie and me and another musician to go to this small but important gathering to represent Duke. When it was all over, and people were drifting out, I was left with Eubie and we walked downstairs together. We came to a wide street and, as we waited for the signal to change, Eubie remarked: 'These streets get wider and wider, do you mind helping me?' I was glad to take his arm and help him across the street. He was about 90 at that time. I heard him play piano at about that age. When a bass player started to play with him he waved him away. Eubie's great left hand was all that was needed.'
Brubeck, 86, has always taken care of himself well by a jazzman's standards - unlike Blake who claims he smoked heavily from the age of six, and who said: 'I don't have any bad habits. They might be bad habits for other people but they're all right for me'.
Brubeck may well live longer than his old friend whose Memories of You he revisits on his latest album. There is no striding left hand in these reflective reinterpretations of a well-balanced mixture of enduring standards and Brubeck originals, but his authority at the keyboard is undiminished.
It's different from the music he is known for. As the leader of the Dave Brubeck Quartet, the pianist is always associated with one of the most successful ensembles in jazz.