Alistair Cooke, former host of PBS' "Masterpiece Theatre", and American correspondent for the BBC, played blues/jazz piano and sang. I believe my local PBS station has played a recording of him singing and playing "Basin Street Blues".

Here's a quote:

Yes, I cannot imagine life without music. I just had a feel for it as a boy. We had a piano. My brother learned to play it and learned music - which I thought was magical. I immediately started to pick out stuff for myself.

I had a feel for harmony and at some point when I had made the recording, 'This Evening at the Piano,' - which I did about 40 years ago - I decided to take lessons. My teacher was rather famous and terribly attractive. I was hopeless.

To this day a musical notation is really a bunch of houseflies on telegraph poles. I have no idea what they mean.

I am deeply stupid about converting them into chords. However, I learnt entirely by ear and picked up classical music by composers such as pieces by Beethoven.

Then, of course, I got interested in jazz while I was in Cambridge.