The blues singer and guitarist started in music when his father taught him to play the ukulele at the age of six, but it was not until he was 13 that he got his first electric guitar.

Subsequently discovering Robert Johnson he was astounded and fascinated at the banging sound as the bottle neck knocked against the frets as the bluesman slid it up and down the neck of his guitar and became determined to recapture the sound.

In 1979 he acquired Leadbessie, a beat-up 1934 National Steel Guitar in an equally beat-up case and with extra heavy strings.

In 1982 he went solo and has been performing by himself ever since.