From the first note the vibrations from the loudspeaker made my hair stand up. The stabbing sounds from the guitar could almost break a window. When Johnson started singing, he seemed like a guy who could have sprung from the head of Zeus in full armour. I immediately differentiated between him and anyone else I had ever heard.

Dylan said he was always a fan of the passion Ma Rainey brought to her singing. The great blues singer, who died in 1939 aged 53, is namechecked in his song Tombstone Blues, and Dylan also once wrote a song called Yonder Comes Sin, an update of Rainey’s Yonder Comes the Blues.

Dylan said he considered John Lee Hooker, one of the "true great bluesmen". On his 1966 Basement Tapes, Dyland recorded a version of Hooker’s Tupelo.

Dylan said that when he was young and learning his trade he was also influenced by the "rebellion songs" of Tommy Makem.

The best ballad singer I ever heard in my life

Ramblin' Jack was a musical hero," said Dylan. One time when Elliott was playing a version of Don’t Think Twice, Dylan was in the audience and stood up and said: "I relinquish it to you, Jack!

Karen Dalton is my favourite singer. Karen had a voice like Billie Holiday’s and played the guitar like Jimmy Reed and went all the way with it.

I've always dug Steve Cropper... his guitar playing. Ever since the first Booker T. record. I heard that back in the Midwest. Yeah, everybody was playing like him.

I love Joe South's records. He he was quiet. He didn't say too much. I always did like him, though.

Tupelo Honey' has always existed and that Morrison was merely the vessel and the earthly vehicle for it.

Prine's stuff is pure Proustian existentialism. Midwestern mindtrips to the nth degree. And he writes beautiful songs. I remember when Kris Kristofferson first brought him on the scene. All that stuff about Sam Stone the soldier junky daddy and Donald and Lydia, where people make love from ten miles away. Nobody but Prine could write like that. If I had to pick one song of his, it might be Lake Marie. I don't remember what album that's on.

I liked Elvis Presley. Elvis Presley recorded a song of mine. That's the one recording I treasure the most... it was called Tomorrow Is a Long Time. I wrote it but never recorded it"

Boy, I love them . . . the Flying Burrito Brothers, unh-huh. I've always known Chris Hillman, you know, from when he was in the Byrds, who had a distinctive sound. And he's always been a fine musician. The Brothers' records knocked me out.

Guy Clark's wife Susanna Clark, said that Townes Van Zandt turned down repeated invitations to write with Dylan. Dylan, who was a "big fan" of Townes and claimed to have all of his records; Van Zandt admired Dylan's songs, but didn't care for his celebrity.

"Guy Clark is one of my favourite songwriters."

"I could never escape from the bittersweet, lonely, intense world of Harold Arlen," Dylan wrote about the man who composed Somewhere Over The Rainbow and Come Rain or Come Shine.

His musical patterns are all over the place, probably because he's classically trained. There might be three separate songs within a Zevon song, but they're all effortlessly connected. Zevon was a musician's musician, a tortured one. Desperado Under the Eaves. It's all in there.

I keep a close watch on this heart of mine... I must have recited those lines to myself a million times. Johnny's voice was so big it made the world grow small.

There was no one in her class. When she sang she made your teeth drop

Gordo's been around as long as me. Shadows, Sundown, If You Could Read My Mind. I can't think of any I don't like

Aaron is one of the world's great singers, a figure of rugged power, built like a tank but has the most angelic singing voice. A voice that could almost redeem a lost soul. It seems so incongruous. So much for appearances. There's so much spirituality in his singing that it could even bring sanity back in a world of madness.

His repertoire was beyond category. Songs made my head spin, made me want to gasp, for me it was an epiphany. It was like I had been in the dark and someone had turned on the main switch of a lightning conductor

Phenomenal Ebbtide by Frank Sinatra never failed to fill me with awe. The lyrics were so mystifying and stupendous. When Frank sang that song, I could hear everything in his voice - death, God, the universe – everything