When I reflect on how things have changed, I can't help but laugh.

Blues and jazz pulled me away from what was left of my family.

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.

When I reflect on how things have changed, I can't help but laugh.

I must have been heavily schizophrenic all my life. The me who hears what the other me can't play is the dominant one.

Since the age of 12, all my musical thinking has been influenced by Afro-American music.

Every musical movement that is big enough has to produce some good musicians who wouldn't have had the incentive to start playing without it.