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My older brother had a lot of Elvis on vinyl, and really, that was my first introduction to music during the Fifties.

Elvis deserves a lot of credit for bringing the blues to middle America, not the Vegas stuff. The early stuff, The Sun records, and the first few RCA records. He was wonderful, he had the power, the drive, and he was so dedicated to his music.

I sang in church growing up. Memphis is the blues capital of the world, we like to say.

I was an original Elvis fan. He was the voice of my generation. I was listening to him on the radio when he released his great Sun records with Scotty Moore on electric guitar and Bill Black on bass.

I'd been to Memphis before, but we stayed out of Memphis early on in the late 70s for obvious reasons. People were very sensitive about Elvis Presley, and my stage name obviously would be provocative to some people in that area at that time.

The first record I bought was a Carl Perkins record, because I saw him at The Festival at Sandpoint, Idaho. I loved Elvis and I found out that he wrote 'Blue Suede Shoes'... so connecting that experience of going to see him play was pretty awesome. That's when I realised I wanted to play guitar.

I used to be with a publishing house called Roosevelt Music. A gentleman there told me he had seen Peggy Lee perform Fever in Las Vegas and I found out later she wanted to record it.

In 20 years I had sold more records for RCA than any artist except Elvis Presley.

I've always wanted to record a jazz record. I did one in the '70s with Barbara Carroll. It's been a journey.