If there was ever any truth to the trickle-down theory, the only evidence of it I've ever seen was in that period of 1960 to 1965. All of sudden they were handing out major label recording contracts like they were coming in Cracker Jack boxes.

Most blues don't have a beginning, middle, or end. You just cut a couple slices of blues.

I'm an exhibitionist, I was an exhibitionist as a kid.

My uncle and my grandfather both worked in the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

And then adds with a laugh, 'but in retrospect I think he may have been more sophisticated than we were.'

I don't think I went a year or so without a record between 1959 and 1979, sometimes two.

God has a way of telling you when to change your strings.