Watch Stephen Stills Team With Blues Legend Willie Dixon At 1983 Muddy Waters Tribute Concert

“I’m first and foremost a blues player,” Stephen Stills said in 2015. “My first songs were Jimmy Reed songs, Muddy Waters songs, Robert Johnson, and stuff like that. Folk singers do everything in C and blues singers do everything in E and A. I’m more of the latter. There’s too much I owe to black people.”

Stills, who today marks his 79th birthday, gave the statement above in an interview with the Austin Chronicle while on tour with The Rides, a group he formed with guitarist Kenny Wayne Shepherd and keyboardist Barry Goldberg. The supergroup was rounded out by bassist Kevin McCormick and Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble drummer Chris Layton. The Rides – who Stills called “the blues band of my dreams” – have released two albums to date, 2013’s Can’t Get Enough and 2016’s Pierced Arrow, both of which topped Billboard’s Top Blues Albums chart.

The Rides grew out of Stills’ long-standing love of the blues, which he continues to champion with his annual Light Up The Blues charity concerts. Stills, whose eclectic career includes induction into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame as a member of Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills & Nash (as the first to be twice inducted on the same night), was inspired to form The Rides as an homage to Al Kooper’s 1968 album, Super Session. One side of that album featured Stills on guitar and the other side featured blues guitarist Mike Bloomfield, with Goldberg playing throughout.

In July 1983, Stills participated in a tribute concert for blues legend Muddy Waters, who months prior died at age 70. Part of the performance featured Stills accompanied by his bandmate Graham Nash (illness kept David Crosby from participating). The concert was shown on the television program Rock ‘N’ Roll Tonite and also featured Stills showing off his blues chops with solo acoustic guitar versions of blues icon Robert Johnson’s “Crossroads” and Chuck Berry’s “You Can’t Catch Me.”

Among the highlights of the Muddy Waters tribute concert was the appearance of influential blues performer, songwriter and record producer Willie Dixon. Stills was able to showcase his blues playing guitar chops while backing Dixon on his blues standards “I’m Your Hoochie Coochie Man,” “The Seventh Son” and “Backdoor Man.” Dixon, who also wrote such blues classics as “Little Red Rooster,” “Spoonful,” “I Just Want to Make Love to You” and many others, died in 1992 at age 76.

Watch Stephen Stills tap into his blues roots while backing Willie Dixon at a Muddy Waters tribute below: