I can’t think of anyone I’ve mistreated. I’ve always thought that I am my brother’s keeper. And I believe there’s a ‘great spirit’ that takes care of all of us.
I look at an audience kind of like meeting my in-laws for the first time. You want to be yourself, but you still want to be somebody that they like. When I go on the stage each night, I try my best to outguess my audience.
Jazz is the big brother of the blues. If a guy’s playing blues like we play, he’s in high school. When he starts playing jazz it’s like going on to college, to a school of higher learning.
The crowds treat me like my last name. When I go onstage people usually stand up, I never ask them to, but they do. They stand up and they don’t know how much I appreciate it.
I’d rather be B.B. King. That’s the way I started. Let the heavy metal guys play heavy metal, let the others play the other … I try to do what I do better, not get away from it.
The blues was like that problem child that you may have had in the family. You was a little bit ashamed to let anybody see him, but you loved him. You just didn’t know how other people would take it.
