You know the BBC had not been particularly generous in its deliverance of blues and esoteric kinds of music.

If you don't know the blues... there's no point in picking up the guitar and playing rock and roll or any other form of popular music.

The reflection of the world is blues that's where that part of the music is at. Then you got this other kind of music that's tryin' to come around.

I've said that playing the blues is like having to be black twice. Stevie Ray Vaughan missed on both counts but I never noticed.

I like to play guitar jam out play the blues go watch movies. I love movies.

The next thing I knew I was out of the service and making movies again. My first picture was called GI Blues. I thought I was still in the army.

The blues is losing someone you love and not having enough money to immerse yourself in drink.

I guess music particularly the blues is the only form of schizophrenia that has organised itself into being both legal and beneficial to society.

I started playing ukulele first for 2 years from age 9 to 11 and got my first guitar and got inspired by blues I heard on the radio that turned me on and I started learning myself.

Jazz is the big brother of the blues. If a guy's playing blues like we play he's in high school. When he starts playing jazz it's like going on to college to a school of higher learning.

Blues are the songs of despair but gospel songs are the songs of hope.

I remember listening to the radio as a kid and finding that the songs always made me feel more peaceful. Funny but the more hurtin' the music was the better it made me feel. I think of that now when I write my songs. I may not be feelin' the blues myself but I'm writing them for other people who have a hard life.

The blues was like that problem child that you may have had in the family. You was a little bit ashamed to let anybody see him but you loved him. You just didn't know how other people would take it.

I grew up with a heavy diet of gospel folk and blues because those are kind of the cornerstones of traditional American music.

My dad was good friends with the Bad Medicine Blues Band - one of the only blues bands in Fargo as you can imagine! He took me out to see them play when I was 12 years old and I was really inspired by their guitar player Ted Larsen.

My folks have played everything from rock disco pop funk and blues. My dad has always brought and played different genres like jazz classical and Latin. With all this in my pocket I feel I have a taste of everything for my influences.

Jazz took too much discipline. You have to come in at the right place which is different than me singing the blues where I can sing 'Oh baby ' if there's a pause in the melody. With jazz you better leave that space open or put in something real cool.