Elvis was a giant and influenced everyone in the business.
Soul music has so many great artists who put their thing down. That's important.
Small Faces were really a soul band as far as we were concerned. That's what we listened to; that's what we played, you know? We were pretty much based on Booker T. and the M.G.'s.
Elvis Presley, The Everly Brothers, and a lot of American artists were my greatest influences.
I love the Memphis sound. When I was 16-and-a-half, with my driver's permit, I was playing New Jersey clubs in a 10-piece band; we had a horn section and would play great, great songs like 'Hold On! I'm Comin'' and 'Knock on Wood' and 'Midnight Hour.'
It just so happened that the sound I've developed has the Memphis origins to it that made Drake wanted to work with it.
There wasn't really a lot of difference from a Mississippi perspective between what Elvis did on 'Mystery Train' or 'Milkcow Blues' or what Bill Monroe was playing or what Flatt and Scruggs was playing; it was rock 'n' roll to me.
The first record I bought was actually Booker T and the MG's 'Red Beans and Rice.'
I love Motown, but I've obviously always been more of a Memphis soul fan. If it's Stax or Motown, I go Stax.
Many cities make music, but no city breathes music quite like Memphis. The songs and sounds that come from here are uniquely American.
Elvis deserves a lot of credit for bringing the blues to middle America, not the Vegas stuff. The early stuff, The Sun records, and the first few RCA records. He was wonderful, he had the power, the drive, and he was so dedicated to his music.
I got the idea of what a band should be from listening to Booker T and Otis Redding.
I feel like it took artists like Pimp C and Andre 3000 with 'International Players Anthem' - I feel like it took the Memphis sound to a certain peak but it never really broke into the mainstream.
