Hello, I'm Kesti Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive for rights reasons we've had to shorten the music.

The program was originally broadcast in 1999, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

My castaway this week is a musician, still drawing huge crowds at the age of 78.

He's recently finished an anniversary tour of Britain. Born in California, his father was a cattle rancher, and his mother a classical pianist who trained under Maira Hess.

The greatest influence in his musical career, however, was the composer Darius Mule, who told him he had to compose, even though at that time he couldn't read music.

And compose he did, jazz improvisations that took him from small beginnings at college gigs to one of the most popular and biggest-selling jazz musicians in the world.

The album, which includes his signature tune, Take 5, is still selling in huge numbers nearly 40 years after it was first recorded.

Jazz musicians don't give up, he says, till they can't walk anymore or they drop dead.

He is Dave Rubik, 78 years old, and still walking, Dave, and still enjoying jazz as much as ever.

Maybe more. I've really enjoyed this tour, and the audiences have been great, and the band is playing wonderfully.

But when you walk out onto that concert platform, which it is these days, a concert platform for you, do you still get the same thrill that you ever did?

Well, you still get scared and nervous. In fact, Dave Maira Hess said the worst part of a concert was walking from the wings to the piano, and then looking out at the audience over a river of ice.

But in your case, of course, it's perhaps even worse because you can't rehearse. You never play anything the same twice. That is the nature of jazz.

Yeah, and we always hope to rehearse. And if we could, we would, but we don't have the opportunity.

But you can't by definition, can you?

Well, you can set yourself up like a basketball team or football team, and then somebody will do something differently than the plays you have worked out.

Not always be the beginning of the best part of the game or the performance.

This is when improvisation comes in, whether it's on the sports field or playing jazz.

And the tunes, although wordless, are usually based on the rhythm of a line you've heard. Can you explain that?

I forgot when it's deja vu all over again. Where does that come from?

Well, that comes from not the cartoon character, Yogi Berra, but the real Yogi Berra, the baseball player and the coach.

And he said to his team when they were behind its deja vu all over again.

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