New York, United States: Mose Allison, the witty Mississippi blues pianist whose songs were embraced and covered by some of the biggest names in British rock, died Tuesday. He was 89.

Allison did from undisclosed causes at his home in Hilton Head, South Carolina, his family said in a statement on his website.

Relaying stories of the American South with literary puns and gallows humor, Allison defied genre as he sang with flourishes of pop and jazz but with a background in blues and boogie-woogie.

Raised outside the town of Tippo, Mississippi, Allison was a rare white star in blues. He said he picked up the mournful musical and story-telling form from African American sharecroppers around him.

"I never thought I was playing black music. I was just playing music, the stuff I liked," he later said in an interview with The A.V. Club entertainment site.

Asked if he faced pushback as a white blues artist, he said with a laugh: "I didn't have any trouble until I got to New York. That's when everybody started telling me I couldn't do what I was doing."

While never a superstar, Allison began touring Britain in the 1960s and found glory vicariously as British rockers eager to explore the blues roots of rock would cover his songs.

The Who performed "Young Man Blues," a tale of growing older that thanks to the cover would become one of Allison's best known songs.

Van Morrison and Elvis Costello both enthusiastically performed Allison's music. Other acts that covered his work included punk icons The Clash, who included his tune "Look Here" on the classic 1980 triple-album "Sandinista!"

Country singer Bonnie Raitt was among the few US artists to cover his songs. She performed "Everybody's Cryin' Mercy," a peace anthem which Allison wrote during the Vietnam War and took back up during the first Gulf War.