Born Maurice Rodgers in the steel town of East Chicago, Indiana, where he studied classical piano, he had the distinct benefit of his father’s nightclub and the up-close and personal influences of the blues and jazz players who performed there. As a teenager, sneaking into the notorious Chicken Shack with his best friend Willie B. in nearby Gary, he was awestruck by the blues of Willie Dixon, Eddie Boyd, Jimmy Reed and others.

"At the time, they referred to those clubs as the Chitlin Circuit," Rodgers recalls, "but to me it was a royal banquet." It was then that music became the dominating force in his life.

When rock rolled in, he was dazzled by its black and whiteness, and then overwhelmed by the Stax and Mussel Shoals Soul Explosion that dominated with Aretha, Sam & Dave and many more who hit the airwaves between 1963 and 1967. Still in high school, Rodgers joined his first band; a blues/R&B outfit called The Rocketeers.

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