What you sees, is what you gets.

His lazy slack-jawed singing piercing harmonica and hypnotic guitar patterns were one of the blues' most easily identifiable sounds in the 1950s and 1960s and had a significant impact on many rock and roll artists who followed such as Elvis Presley Billy Gibbons and the Rolling Stones. In 1991 Reed was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. "Big Boss Man" was sung regularly by Ron "Pigpen" McKernan with the Grateful Dead during the 1960s and early 1970s and appears on their live album Skull and Roses.

Reed was a major player in the field of electric blues as opposed to the more acoustic-based sound of many of his contemporaries. His lazy slack-jawed singing piercing harmonica and hypnotic guitar patterns were one of the blues' most easily identifiable sounds in the 1950s and 1960s and had a significant impact on many rock and roll artists who followed such as Elvis Presley Billy Gibbons and the Rolling Stones.