The music I listened to when I was a kid was Sonny Boy Williams and Pinetop Perkins. He was the one who had the most influence on my playing. I saw him through a window playing piano and I thought it was unbelievable somebody could move their fingers that fast. And this is how I got interested in piano.

I miss riding those fast trains in Japan... 'cause I'd never seen a train that fast in my life.

When you think of blues, all you think about is crying guitar like B.B. King's guitar. You think about someone crying that their woman's gone. And how bad life is and all that. Why can't it be something happy with the blues? Why can't it have a hip-hop beat to which you can do the dances of today?

They would come down in Mississippi, they hired me as a talent scout. And I would go all over Mississippi, Alabama, Texas, and find out different artists for them.

I'm not gonna try to defend, or undo what's been done. All I could say about whatever's been done, it's been done, and it's water under the bridge. I have no regrets of my life.

In China, when you get to the airport everyone be talking in American slang.

I always considered myself being an organizer. I'm very good at teaching singers, I'm very good at staging a show, to entertain people. But I never included myself. I never applied this to me as an artist.