Primer has been amazingly productive over the years; he's recorded and toured with everyone from Muddy Waters and Willie Dixon to Junior Wells and James Cotton. I lost track of the number of albums he's listed on at around 87 or 88. John just smiles at me "probably more than that." From a sharecropping family to a legendary blues man, John Primer is the real deal so we started our conversation with his first instrument.

James Cotton was born into a Mississippi farming family in the middle of the summer, 1935. As the youngest of eight children, his prospects in the Tunica cotton fields held few opportunities beyond hauling water buckets for laborers or endless hours on a plantation tractor seat in the sweltering Delta sun.

Luther Tucker loved the blues. Born in Memphis in 1936 his path in life seemed pre-destined when he moved to Chicago in the early 1940s. His mother played piano and she would eventually introduce young Luther to some of Chicago’s most legendary bluesmen.