His early influences were the country music he heard growing up in the 1950s. But he has also embraced rock, rockabilly, surf music, doo-wop and blues.

He can croon like Ernest Tubb, or tear into a high-powered solo on his unique double-necked "guit-steel" electric guitar.

He's Junior Brown, and he continues to delight audiences and defy categorization -- whether on record, live performance or, increasingly, on television.

Recently, when host Mark Hellenberg caught up with Junior by telephone, they talked about his music, and his unique guitar, which he says came to him in a dream.

"The actual realization that it could work came to me in a dream," Brown said. "I'd been thinking about it before the dream. It never hit me that they could be an equal sort of thing, an actual double-necked instrument. It took the dream for me to actually realize it. Basically all I did was combine a six-string with a steel guitar."

The yellow one, his first, is now in the Country Music Hall of Fame Museum.

He has been playing professionally since his late teens, starting with country music before branching out into different styles.

"We play the field quite a bit, as far as styles go," Junior says. "If the music's good, if the song is good, I'm always interested."

Always unpredictable, this multi-Grammy nominee enjoys playing both large venues and pickup gigs. He has released four solo records. His music has appeared in films and on television, and Junior has appeared as an actor in motion pictures and television series.