“I was standing on the deck of the USS Blue, a destroyer. We were all alone out there at this buoy, tied up.”

After the atomic bombs were dropped, the war ended and we went into Tokyo Bay with the rest of the fleet, the Missouri and the rest of them, while they signed the terms of surrender that ended the war.

All we had aboard the ship that morning was one Annapolis graduate and three reserves.

I’d get a shell, they weighed about 80 pounds I think, but when I was 19 or 20 that was nothing. I’d take a shell and a bag of powder, I’d put it in the hoist and then I would send it up to the gun.

The gunner’s mate came up and started breaking the locks on the ammunition. Everything was locked up for fear that someone might go in there with a cigarette or something.

I was 20 years old at Pearl Harbor. I was in the Navy about a year and four months before the war.

Everything was black in the harbor, but there were still some fires burning on the ships.

Don’t get caught up on ‘I’m brown, black, white, red, blue, whatever.’ You gotta ask, what were you called before 1492?

You know, the BBC had not been particularly generous in its deliverance of blues and esoteric kinds of music.

I’ve never turned blue in someone else’s bathroom. I consider that the height of bad manners.

And then I think we realized, like any young guys, that blues are not learned in a monastery. You’ve got to go out there and get your heart broke and then come back and then you can sing the blues.

My music is rhythm and blues and with that said, the blues element of it is a major portion.

I use rock and jazz and blues rhythms because I love that music.

Congress, just out of the clear blue sky.

It’s not written in the Constitution or anything else….