I was playing with steel picks on a steel guitar, and there was no amplification needed.
Logically, when you talkin' about folk music and blues, you find out it's music of just plain people.
Something is better than nothing. Doin' anything for a man, there's investments involved, there's time and production. It's better to give him ten bucks and get a record out than to never record the cat.
Everybody would grab a guitar and listen to somebody else and call themselves a folk singer. When they didn't know no more songs, they'd run out of them.
I met Sonny after (Blind Boy) Fuller died, and me and Sonny played in the streets like everybody else.
From then on in, me and Sonny started makin' records. My first records, Sonny was backin' me up. Sonny wasn't singin' natural at the time; he was singin' falsetto.
I got Sonny up to Harlem, and we started street playin' in New York. We did that for three or four years and survived. We brought it back to the streets again.
There's a lot of good musicians who are unheard of. Get it down before they pass away.
