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The blues is deceptively simple. Verse and chorus. Sometimes not even a chorus. Four bars that repeat, no Auto-Tune, electricity optional. It is the most direct, bare-bones of content. There is no interference between the head and heart.

Gospel music is never pessimistic, it's never 'oh my god, its all going down the tubes', like the blues often is.

Some of the greatest blues music is some of the darkest music you've ever heard.

To me, the blues is an infection. I don't think it's necessarily a melancholy thing; the blues can be really positive and I think I think anyone and everyone can have a place for the blues. It need not always a woeful, sorrowful thing. It's more reflective; it reminds you to feel.

Blues means what milk does to a baby. Blues is what the spirit is to the minister. We sing the blues because our hearts have been hurt, our souls have been disturbed.

Everything comes out in blues music: joy, pain, struggle. Blues is affirmation with absolute elegance. It's about a man and a woman. So the pain and the struggle in the blues is that universal pain that comes from having your heart broken. Most blues songs are not about social statements.

Thank God for beautiful songs about feeling despair when you yourself are in despair. They really get us through.

The blues echoes right through into soul, R&B and hip hop. It's part of the make-up of modern music. You can't turn your back on the blues.

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.