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So I went out and bought Hard Again by Muddy Waters. That was a big learning curve. I listened to that album again and again and again. James Cotton was the harmonica player on that album.

When I started workin' with Muddy. That convinced me that I could get away with doin' the blues.

In 1940 I came across a record by Jimmy Yancey. I can't say how important that record is. From then on, all I wanted to do was play the blues.

There were times I thought I was going to turn to the blues, but then I'd hear better blues players.

I used to be a great blues singer.

I spent a few years here in Memphis, in the late '70s and early '80s, where I was studying a lot of country blues players and their styles. So it seems like every record I'll do, I will appropriate these blues styles that I remember.

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

My favorite country blues player was Big Bill Broonzy. City blues was Freddie King, but I liked them all - Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Ralph Willis, Lonnie Johnson, Brownie McGhee and the three Kings, B.B., Albert and Freddie. Jazz-wise, I listened to Django, Barney Kessel and Wes Montgomery.

I'm not a super blues player, but I was exposed to the Texas blues sound while I was growing up, and that definitely rubbed off on me.