I was a regular hand when I was 7. I picked cotton. I drove tractors. Children grew up not thinking that this is what they must do. We thought this was the thing to do to help your family.

People all over the world have problems. And as long as people have problems, the blues can never die.

I've always tried to defend the idea that the blues doesn't have to be sung by a person who comes from Mississippi, as I did.

Sometimes I just think that there are more things to be said to make the audience understand what I'm trying to do more. When I'm singing, I don't want you to just hear the melody. I want you to relive the story, because most of the songs have pretty good storytelling.

Growing up on the plantation there in Mississippi, I would work Monday through Saturday noon. I'd go to town on Saturday afternoons, sit on the street corner, and I'd sing and play.

I wanted to connect my guitar to human emotions.

I'm trying to get people to see that we are our brother's keeper. Red, white, black, brown or yellow, rich or poor, we all have the blues.

The minute I stop singing orally, I start to sing by playing Lucille.

I have not been a good father, but no father has loved his children more. Like my father, I decided the best thing I could do for my kids was work and provide. Fortunately, I've been able to do that. Unfortunately, my work was on the road, and that's meant a life of one-nighters.

My wife Martha used to call me Ol' Lemon Face because of my facial contortions when I play Lucille. I squeeze my eyes and open my mouth, raise my eyebrows, cock my head and God knows what else. I look like I'm in torture, when in truth, I'm in ecstasy. I don't do it for show. Every fiber of my being is tingling.

Blues is a tonic for whatever ails you. I could play the blues and then not be blue anymore.

I never wanted to be like other blues singers. I might like hearing them play, but I've never wanted to be anyone other than myself. There are a few people that I've wished I could play like, but when I tried, it didn't work.

As for my band, well, my mentors were Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Jimmie Lunceford, and no one had a band more smartly dressed than Duke.

If T-Bone Walker had been a woman, I would have asked him to marry me. I'd never heard anything like that before: single-string blues played on an electric guitar.

When I do eventually drop, I pray to God that it'll happen in one of three ways. Firstly, on stage or leaving the stage, then secondly in my sleep. And the third way? You'll have to figure that out for yourself!

I used to play - when I first started trying to be professional, I disk jockey from 1949 to 1955 in Memphis, Tennessee, and I was quite popular there as a disk jockey.

I would sit on the street corners in my hometown of Indianola, Mississippi, and I would play. And, generally, I would start playing gospel songs.

I bought my first electric guitar when I moved to Memphis; a Gibson with a DeArmond pickup which I used with a small Gibson amplifier.

I don't care for the music when they're talking bad about women because I think women are God's greatest gift to the planet - I just like music.

Everything I record, I just try to sound like me and come up with songs that suit what I do, and then just go for it.

You've heard me call myself a bluesman and a blues singer. I call myself a blues singer, but you ain't never heard me call myself a blues guitar man. Well, that's because there's been so many can do it better'n I can, play the blues better'n me. I think a lot of them have told me things, taught me things.

Touring a segregated America - forever being stopped and harassed by white cops hurt you most 'cos you don't realise the damage. You hold it in. You feel empty, like someone reached in and pulled out your guts. You feel hurt and dirty, less than a person.

I tried to connect my singing voice to my guitar an' my guitar to my singing voice. Like the two was talking to one another.

The blues was bleeding the same blood as me.