As a teenager learning the guitar in the suburbs of Los Angeles, James became interested in blues around 1966; while listening to many of the great originals such as Bukka White, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Mance Lipscomb and Johnny Shines, at the Ash Grove folk club in L.A. He formed one of the city’s first blues bands, playing a primitive Hubert Sumlin-style lead, and slide guitar in a Muddy Waters/Elmore James vein.