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.

Steve Miller

I liked blues from the time my mother used to take me to church. I started to listen to gospel music, so I liked that. But I had an aunt at that time, my mother's aunt who bought records by people like Lonnie Johnson, Robert Johnson, Blind Lemon Jefferson, and a few others.

B. B. King

We were either listening to jazz or Robert Johnson, the old blues man, but not to our peers.

Butch Trucks

I'm not trying to emulate or imitate. But I do believe that I embody that spirit from Robert Johnson on up.

CeeLo Green

But I've got to think of myself as the luckiest guy. Robert Johnson only had one album's worth of work as his legacy. That's all that life allowed him.

David Bowie

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

David Edwards

I heard Robert Johnson way before I heard about Eric Clapton.

Dion DiMucci

My most revered hero is Robert Johnson. His lyrics are so consistent with rap: the danger, the boldness, the creativity.

Fantastic Negrito

Ain't nobody more punk rock than Robert Johnson, Lead Belly, even Little Richard.

Fantastic Negrito

My first concert - maybe it was 1979 - was a blur. I'm not sure whether it was Blue Oyster Cult/Cheap Trick/Pat Travers at San Jose Civic Auditorium or The Police/The Knack/Robert Johnson at Berkeley's Zellerbach Auditorium.

Greg Gutfeld

I dabbled in things like Howlin' Wolf, Cream and Led Zeppelin, but when I heard Son House and Robert Johnson, it blew my mind. It was something I'd been missing my whole life. That music made me discard everything else and just get down to the soul and honesty of the blues.

Jack White

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

Jeff Gutt

My thought was I should try to stick with names that people may recognize like Robert Johnson, Son House, and Hoagy Carmichael, so if somebody cared to research, they would find a wealth of material.

John Mellencamp

My guitar is a 1934 National Trojan. They call it a resonator, which is the guitar guys played in the honky-tonks before amplification. It's very loud. It's the type of guitar that Son House and Robert Johnson played.

Johnny Flynn

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.

Marty Stuart

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

Muddy Waters

I had an invitation to contribute a track to a Robert Johnson tribute album, and it was the first time I'd done anything like that in my life. I was not brought up with the blues or anything like that, and I really, really enjoyed it.

Robert Palmer

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.

Steve Miller

My guitar heroes are Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck and people like that - so I've tried to make an album of Robert Johnson covers that, well, while not totally faithful for blues purists, is faithful for people like me that grew up with the '60s and the electric blues-rock versions of Johnson's songs.

Todd Rundgren