The thing of playin' and singin' never bothered me.

I'm not inspired by songwriting at all; that took place years ago. I'm pretty well established, as far as my influences go. I don't listen to music anymore. It all sounds the same to me.

I don't remember any impression [from blues].The blues was just everywhere in the Mississippi Delta. It was mostly black sharecroppers living there, and there was a lot of blues around. Sometimes the guys would sing the blues in the fields, working.

I told [my daughter Amy] at an early age that she had a good ear. But I didn't influence her music much. She's pretty much developed her style on her own, and she's a talented songwriter.

I'm playin' music for a certain type of person. Fortunately, there are more and more of us. At least there are more comin' to see me than there were 30 years ago or so.

I do very few standards. Hardly any. Other people's tunes that I do are usually obscure tunes, for the most part, although I do a couple of Duke Ellington tunes that are well known.

The idea was I'd never amount to anything in music, The theme there was that I was talented, but I wouldn't work hard enough to do anything with it.