A lot of this album feels like a Chess record from the fifties. Did you have that sound in your head going in or did it come up as you played?

Well some of the things do have that feel. It’s mostly in the way the instruments were played.

For the first half of the nineteenth century in America, almost everybody carried around the same question, namely, what in blazes are we doing here? Between the War of 1812 and the Civil War, we fought Mexico for Texas and, to our surprise, won the whole Southwest. We talked the British out of Oregon. We simply took California. I imagine this group of our forefathers to be more or less in the position of the dog who finally catches the car it's been chasing. Then the dog has to learn to drive the car.

Co-hosts Adrien Daller & Tom Bradley
Dr. John, with Eric Clapton, Take 6, Whitney Houston, Teagarden & Van Winkle, Queen, The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Chuck Berry, Muddy Waters, Otis Spann, Steve Winwood, Christine Aguilera, Stevie Wonder

Jerry Lee Lewis, with Elvis Presley, Blake Shelton, Brad Paisley, Brooks & Dunn, Conway Twitty, Garth Brooks, George Strait with Jimmy Buffett, Georgia Satellites, Gretchen Wilson, Jo Dee Messina, Kenny Chesney, Shania Twain, Trent Tomlinson, Johnny Cash, Big & Rich, David Ball, Joe Nichols, Rhett Atkins, The Notorious Cherry Bombs with Rodney Crowell & Vince Gill, Toby Keith

Les Paul with Joe Perry, Mick Hucknall, Kenny Olsen; Blood, Sweat & Tears; Simply Red; Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes; Classics Four; Bill Withers; Buddy Rich & Max Roach; Kodo; Ray Charles; Electric Flag; The Rolling Stones

Norah Jones, Aretha Franklin, with Mavis Staples, with Eurythmics, with James Brown, Paul Simon, Santana, with Rob Thomas, with Macy Gray, with P.O.D., with Ozomatli, with Placido Domingo

Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Mahavishnu John McLaughlin, Carlos Santana, Marcus Miller, David Sanborn