Rogers has "A genuine enthusiasm for the music and the literature, and that's admirable and contagious" -- International Blues Challenge, Memphis, 2010 Willie Dixon said, "Blues is the roots, and all the rest is the fruits." The music I make and play springs mostly from those roots. Some of it I write myself, and some comes from the wellspring of the American folk tradition. My music is blues from the Piedmont and from rural Mississippi … Rev. Gary Davis, John Hurt, Robert Johnson, Blind Boy Fuller. It’s rags and songs from New Orleans … Jelly Roll Morton, Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey. It’s from Tin Pan Alley, where talented writers borrowed from blues, rags and symphonies to write the popular music of the ‘20’s and ‘30’s. There’s some modern folk music, too. My own songs are blues-based with a lot of additions from other forms, which brings us to that much over-used word: ec-lec-tic– “a combination selected from different sources.” Overused? Yes. But I’d like to think that my music is a blend of the best from the many streams of American music. Mainly, it’s the music that springs from the life stories of ordinary people, from the largely unheralded but gifted poets and musicians who gave us a truly American music.