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The Blossoms had gotten so we were working seven days a week, three or four sessions a day, which was literally killing us, physically. With the instruments that the musicians play, they can do that, but not with us using our voices.

There was a time we decided that it was songs that were done especially from my background because of the things we were dealing with, but nowadays, anybody who has a need, and can find the need, they can sing the blues.

I was influenced a lot by those around me - there was a lot of singing that went on in the cotton fields.

I realized I was tired of singing about trees and flowers. I wanted to sing about real life. From then on, nobody could tell me anything was better than blues.

We're not just going to take some songs from a focus group in Nashville where people are sitting around in a circle having appointments trying to write catchy songs so they can sell them to a band like us.

My father was very interested in music, and when he and his brothers were young, they had a singing group that used to open for Sam Cooke. There was always music in our house, but there wasn't much art around.

My mother was a singer, and both of her sisters were singers. There was always music around.

And the thing that I always tried to do with important singers when I met them was to sit down and record everything they knew, give them a first real run-through of their art.