Ry Cooder is quoted as saying, "Beyond being a great guitar player, I think this guy is one of those interplanetary world musicians-and there are only a few. Blind Willie Johnson is in the ether somewhere. He's up there in the zone." In 1977, "Dark Was The Night" was included in the spacecraft Voyager's time capsule including a selection of information about Earth to portray the diversity of life and culture on the planet. The time capsule is a gold plated copper disc, encoded with 115 images, a variety of natural sounds, spoken greetings in 55 languages, and " an eclectic 90-minute selection of music, including both Eastern and Western classics and a variety of ethnic music."