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My influences were the riff-based blues coming from Chicago in the Fifties - Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf and Billy Boy Arnold records.

Yeah; I'm a much better blues player than anybody knows, but being in the kind of group I'm in, we were always trying to make popular records.

I used to be a great blues singer.

The first time I ever heard the blues, my parents had a stack of records that they weren't using anymore. I found them when I was ten; I didn't know what it was. But I found Lightnin' Hopkins.

I liked blues from the time my mother used to take me to church. I started to listen to gospel music, so I liked that. But I had an aunt at that time, my mother's aunt who bought records by people like Lonnie Johnson, Robert Johnson, Blind Lemon Jefferson, and a few others.

I was a big music fan, but I never bought a bunch of records or was very educated, I guess, on who was who or what was what.

All the classic jazz players all sang and a lot of 'em sang blues.

My primary influences were the best jazz players from the 50's and 60's and later some of the pop people from the same time period along with the better of the well known blues musicians.

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.

As a songwriter, oddly enough, my influences were people like Bob Dylan, The Velvet Underground, and Buddy Holly. Some psychedelic stuff, too.