See, I don't like places where people can't dance - don't like clubs or theatres where a bunch of bourgeois people sit around tip, tip, tipping their fingers.

When I'm singing the blues, I'm singing life.

People that can't stand to listen to the blues, they've got to be phonies.

And as I started reaching deeper I realized that most of the blues of that day was done by men. Women just didn't have the nerve.

This is an album of songs that I've always loved, tunes that I heard. For the first time in 53 years of recording, I really had control over an entire album, start to finish.

I've gone through so much in my life. I should have been dead a long time ago, but I am still here, and I'm the happiest I've ever been.

It's not about battling the original artists when I record these songs, it's about paying tribute to them.