Hugh Laurie Quotes

Is there one blues guy who was the most sophisticated and influential, like Duke Ellington or Louis Armstrong in jazz? Was it Muddy Waters, Little Walter, Lightnin' Hopkins, John Lee Hooker, B.B. King, Robert Johnson, or all of them? I think you have to pick all of them.

My favorite country blues player was Big Bill Broonzy. City blues was Freddie King, but I liked them all - Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Ralph Willis, Lonnie Johnson, Brownie McGhee and the three Kings, B.B., Albert and Freddie. Jazz-wise, I listened to Django, Barney Kessel and Wes Montgomery.

Robert Johnson? No, I didn't know him, personally.

My influences were the riff-based blues coming from Chicago in the Fifties - Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf and Billy Boy Arnold records.

Little Walter and Muddy Waters were incredible. And Bo Diddley was doing some great stuff, too.

My grandmother introduced me to B.B. King. She wasn't someone who had a lot of posters, but there was a big poster of B.B. King on the wall as soon as you walked into her house in Meridian, Mississippi.

John Lee Hooker is the funkiest man alive

I knew BB King when he first started out.

When I was a kid, we didn't have any blues stations. I never heard Howlin' Wolf or Muddy Waters or any of those people until the Stones had come along, and I took it upon myself to find out who these people were that they were covering.

I'm not a big blues fan, but I don't know anyone who doesn't dig B.B. King.

The first band I identified with from Chicago was the Muddy Waters band.

I was staying with my sister and messing around with the guitar every day for my own amusement. Then she took me around and introduced me to Muddy Waters, Jimmy Rogers, Little Walter, and the first time I saw that onstage, it inspired me to play. I thought that was the world.

I was 22 years old when I met Robert Johnson. I was there the night he was poisoned.

I got to see all these incredible blues players, like Jimmy Reed.

Of course that was my idol, Son House. I think he did a lot for the Mississippi slide down there.

Coming up in Chicago, we heard a lot of blues.

The best slide guitar, unless you're playing the Muddy Waters-style, is the old '52 Goldtop Les Paul.

If I go into the Mississippi Delta at pitch black midnight and put on a Robert Johnson record, it's hard to sit in the car because it's pretty powerful.

I was into Jimi Hendrix, Robert Johnson, the blues.

My musical education was grounded in blues and Chicago blues - John Lee Hooker and Otis Redding.

Hardly a day goes by without me sticking on a Muddy Waters record.

I've always wanted the sound of Muddy Waters' early records - only louder

Definitely Muddy Waters has been a prime influence for anybody who's ever done anything rock 'n' roll.

When I heard BB King's 'Sweet Sixteen,' I knew I wanted to play bass because that was the thing that made that record: the bass player.

I played with Sam Lay, Jimmy Reed, Big Walter Horton, Big Moose Walker, and all those guys.