I’ve always had a soft spot for the music of Hall & Oates, especially the duo’s massively popular hit songs from the early 1980s.

Compared with much of the Top 40 music from that era, the R&B-flavored pop songs that Daryl Hall and John Oates wrote and recorded seem to have aged surprisingly well.

Still, I have to admit that I only recently discovered how deep Oates’ passion for – and knowledge of – American roots music ran.

I recently had the opportunity to speak by phone with Oates, and it was quite fun to hear him talk so passionately about his longtime appreciation for blues, folk, country and early rock ‘n’ roll.

Since my interview was for an article I was working on to advance his performance this Friday at the Don Gibson Theatre in Shelby, N.C., one of the first things I asked him was just how cool it was to be performing in a venue with that name.

“It’s amazing,” Oates, 63, replied. “One of the first songs I remember learning as a guitar player was ‘Oh Lonesome Me.’ It had three chords, and when you’re beginning guitar, you have the little picture diagrams of where to put your fingers and all that stuff.

“And I remember; in fact, I think I still have the sheet music with Don Gibson’s face on it. In those days, you bought sheet music. You’d go to your guitar lesson in the little music store, and there would be a big giant rack of sheet music, and you’d pick a song and you’d learn it.”

Oates then added, “Wow, you know what, I should relearn that. I think I’ll have to play it there.”

When I casually mentioned that Gibson wrote “Oh Lonesome Me” and “I Can’t Stop Loving You” in the same day, Oates was surprised.

“I didn’t know that. He wrote those the same day?” Oates replied, his voice crackling with amazement. “Well, that was a good day.”

During our conversation, Oates spoke about getting to pick with such folk and blues legends as Doc Watson and Mississippi John Hurt during the late 1960s, which led me to ask him if he ever had any encounters with Laurens native Rev. Gary Davis, a seminal bluesman who used to perform on the streets of Greenville.

“I remember seeing him in Philadelphia,” said Oates, who grew up in a small town outside of Pennsylvania’s largest city. “And then, later on, he had moved to — I believe – Queens, New York, and I ran into him in New York City when I first moved to New York in the early ‘70s. As I recall, he was giving guitar lessons in Queens, New York … I didn’t take any lessons from him, but I had heard that. He was a very interesting musician.”

At some point during our chat, I mentioned that I had read something in a news release about Oates, as a child, getting some of his first exposure to vintage R&B and early rock ‘n’ roll by listening to famed Philadelphia disc jockey Jerry Blavat on the radio.

I then asked, “What about Hyski O’Roonie McVoutie O’Zoot?”

Oates burst out laughing, then said, “You really know your stuff. Hy Lit. Hyski O’Roonie McVoutie O’Zoot. Wow, now you’re throwing out some stuff. Are you from the northeast?”

I told Oates that I had grown up here in Upstate South Carolina but that I knew about the legendary Philadelphia disc jockey Hy Lit – who referred to himself on-air by the much lengthier and funnier name referred to above – through my friend Jack Fisher, a Wilmington, Del., native, who was an “American Bandstand” dancer in 1957 and later had a distinguished broadcasting career of his own.

Oates then talked about other disc jockeys whose on-air music selections had an influence on him.

“I used to listen to Ed Bradley; remember Ed Bradley from ’60 Minutes’?” Oates said. “Ed actually was a DJ on WDAS, the AM R&B station in Philadelphia. And, also, I remember, there was a station called WIBG, which had a guy named Joe Niagara.

“This was the mid-‘50s, and I remember (WIBG) made this big deal of the fact that they were going to change their format to rock ‘n’ roll. My next door neighbor where I was growing up was a teenager, and I was a little kid, and I remember he used to play rock ‘n’ roll on his car radio. I guess it was a pretty amazing time to be growing up.”

Oates then reminisced about what commercial radio was like in those days.

“DJs actually played the music they liked and the music they thought was cool,” he said. “Of course, this was before radio became co-opted by corporations and became this … well, we don’t need to go there.”

Oates, however, said he is encouraged by the offerings on SiriusXM satellite radio.

“You have these boutique radio shows like the Elizabeth Cook show, the Jim (Lauderdale) and Buddy Miller show and the Cowboy Jack (Clement) show, where they play kind of whatever they want to play. And it’s really cool. There’s so many ways the music business is coming around full circle.”

I then interjected, “Based on the shows you just mentioned, it sounds to me like you’re a big fan of Outlaw Country.”

Oates replied, “It’s my favorite station.”

These days, Oates and his wife split most of their time between Colorado, where their teenage son attends boarding school, and Nashville, Tenn. He said he especially loves being in Music City.

“I’ve just been enjoying getting to play and write with so many amazing people,” Oates said. “I don’t want to drop too many names, but I just did a session with Vince Gill the other night at his (home) studio, and we recorded a song that we wrote together, which was a really incredible experience.

“And I’ve been writing with Jim Lauderdale. Jim and I have been really on a writing roll. We’ve written about five or six songs together.”

Because Lauderdale is a native of nearby Due West, I asked Oates to share some additional thoughts on him.

“Jim is incredible,” Oates replied. “I mean, Jim is obviously well known for his bluegrass and his country music background, but, boy, he’s really eclectic and he has a lot of really interesting ideas. And when he and I get together, we write very unusual songs.

“I think it’s cool to have this hybrid of what I bring and what he brings. We’ve written, like, swing songs. We’ve written R&B songs. I mean, it’s just been really cool. In fact, I’m going to play a bunch of stuff that Jim and I wrote at (Friday’s concert in Shelby).”

Among the other topics that Oates and I talked about was the widespread use of Hall & Oates samples in hip-hop music. I asked him about his initial reaction to hearing De La Soul’s 1989 urban hit “Say No Go,” which heavily sampled “I Can’t Go For That (No Can Do).”

“That was the first time I’d ever heard of sampling,” Oates said. “It’s funny because I remember we were in a park in Queens doing a music video with Nile Rodgers for this movie ‘Earth Girls Are Easy.’ … We were between takes, and some little girl who was in the video audience came up to the stage with a cassette and said, ‘have you heard this?’ She gave it to me, and, of course, I listened to it afterwards, and it was the De La Soul version of ‘Say No Go.’

“… That was the first time I ever heard of someone taking someone else’s song and incorporating it into something new. It was really the beginning of an era, the beginning of a whole new branch of music, and we thought it was cool. We embraced it from the very beginning and, to this day, I think ‘I Can’t Go For That’ may be one of the most sampled songs of all-time.”

Oates then shared some more thoughts on sampling.

“In pop music, innovation comes from the kids,” Oates said. “It comes from the youngest generation. That’s the way it’s always been, and that’s the way it’ll always be. So, you had these urban kids who were finding a voice of their own through a new technology that was just emerging. It was a very interesting time.

“Daryl and I, the way we felt about it was that we had already done the song. We had already done what we did, so we didn’t want to say no one else can ever use it. We thought it was interesting that they were going to use it. We just wanted to figure out how we could get paid for it, because I’m a firm believer in actually getting compensation for the work you do.

“So, in that regard, we told our publishing company, ‘hey, we don’t care what they do with it – it’s really cool – but we just want to make sure that we get paid.’ And we actually did get paid for that song.

“… When people have asked us for licenses to sample our various songs, we have always been very cooperative as long as it’s handled properly. We’ve very rarely turned down a sample request.”

As the conversation continued, Oates and I discussed such topics as the famed Philadelphia-based Cameo-Parkway label and the legendary production team of Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff. As connected as Hall & Oates were to Philadelphia, amazingly, the duo never recorded together in the city. They had moved to New York by the time they started making hits in the 1970s.

One of the selections on Oates’ latest solo album, 2011’s “Mississippi Mile,” is a rendition of the Coasters’ 1957 hit, “Searchin’,” which was written by the iconic songwriting team of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. As a big fan of the Coasters myself, I asked Oates how much of an influence the group had on him as a youth.

“I thought they were really funny,” Oates said. “They were kind of a comedy R&B group, almost. When I saw them live at the Uptown Theatre (in Philadelphia), they were great. They used to do these weird routines where they would all wear, like, baseball uniforms and they’d pantomime a baseball game. They would do all kinds of weird stuff.”

Oates said that he has been friends with Jerry Leiber’s son, Jed Leiber, since the late 1990s.

“Jed and I worked on a couple of my early solo albums, and Jed played B3 (organ) on ‘Mississippi Mile,’” Oates said. “Of course, I met his father, Jerry, before he passed away.

“(For) the Coasters, Jerry wrote those lyrics – ‘Poison Ivy’ – I mean, just unbelievable rock ‘n’ roll lyrics. He was one of the great lyricists of all-time. I always liked the Coasters, and I just felt like doing this really stompy roots version of a Coasters’ song – and I wrote background harmony and doo-wop harmony – would just be kind of cool.”

Before we wrapped up the interview, I gave Oates the opportunity to expand on the lyrical genius of Jerry Leiber.

“If you really listen to those lyrics (to songs) like ‘Young Blood’ and stuff like that, it’s really kind of creepy stuff,” Oates said with a laugh. “But he did it in such a way that no one really, at the time, even understood what he was talking about. I mean, look at ‘Jailhouse Rock.’ Are you kidding me? If you actually delve into the lyrics of that record, it’s kind of scary.

“And when I did get to meet Jerry Leiber, I saw he had this very intelligent, sarcastic view of things, and he was really super, super clever.

“And I remember once I wrote a song with his son, Jed, and we had Jed play it for him. Jed was always a little bit intimidated with playing stuff for his father, but I remember his father saying ‘that was a great lyric.’ And I was like, ‘wow, OK. That’s good enough for me.’”

Before hanging up the phone, I apologized to Oates for jumping all over the place with my interview.

“That’s the best way to do it,” Oates said. “It’s like writing a song. You jump all over the place and eventually it comes together into something that maybe you never intended it to be.”