He was a philosopher of the blues.

I'm TELLING YOU, MAN, the wold is a place."

"Say, the world is a place, huh."

"That's just what I'm saying."

We were walking back to the car after dinner in Hyde Park, and Johnnie was in an expansive mood. He often got like this, expecially after a good meal and wine. The first time I met him, when he was still working with a downtown civic group, he had started explaining the relationship between jazz and Eastern religion, then swerved into an analysis of black women's behinds, before coming to a stop on the subject of federal Reserve Bank policy. In such moments his eyes would grow wide; his voice would speed up; his round, bearded face would glow with a childlike wonder. That was part of the reason I'd hired Johnnie, I suppose, that curiosity of his, his appreciation of the absurd. He was a philosopher of the blues.

Chapter thirteen, Dreams from My Father - Barack Obama