Elton John, Jeff Buckley and dub reggae pioneers Lee Perry and King Tubby. Folk-funk troubadour Ben Harper's record collection is as eclectic as his own records, which reflect his mixed musical and cultural heritage

It was written into Ben Harper's destiny that he was going to be a musician. He really didn't have much choice. "John Lomax [who collected folk music for the Library of Congress] taught my grandmother how to play guitar," he says of his musical heritage. "My grandparents hung out with Pete and Peggy Seeger, and my very first memory is of my dad listening to Stevie Wonder. My parents, and their parents, were eccentric and cool. Music was the language we shared."

Harper's parents were at the forefront of California's 60s hippy revolution. Harper has a black father and a white mother and Cat Stevens and Bob Dylan were on the stereo just as much as Bob Marley, Marvin Gaye and Delta blues players like Son House and Elizabeth Cotton. "People tell me how it's strange that I'm all over the map musically," he says. "For me it's strange that everyone else isn't, because that's the environment I grew up in. It's my birthright."

Ben Harper's eclectic musical education shows on his own records. His new album, Diamonds on the Inside, switches from pure funk to the kind of rootsy rock rarely heard since the Band last hung out with Bob Dylan.

"I did have my own rebellion, at the birth of hip-hop," he claims. "The Sugarhill Gang and Grandmaster Flash became my music when I was a child. But there was no getting around what was part of my DNA."

The idyllic hippy childhood was shaken only by his neighbours, who were punk-rock fans. "They had a band called the Decadents," he remembers. "They were bullies, man. I was only eight or nine and I'll never forget the time they heard the Bee Gees pumping out of our house. They barged in, knocked us around, threw the Bee Gees record in the trash and slapped on This Is the Modern World by the Jam. They influenced the neighbourhood for sure."

Folk and roots nail down Harper's sound. It's a successful formula - he has sold over 5m records - and he sees himself as carrying on a tradition that began in the 20s with slide-guitar blues and was revived in the 50s by Chuck Berry and Fats Domino. "Chuck Berry was the one who showed how you don't have to make jazz to be musically relevant; you don't have to make complex music to be soulful," he says. "Of course, it was being said in the 20s, but it wasn't resonating loudly back then. It took Chuck Berry to say that rhythm and blues could be as effective as Beethoven. Then the Beatles were on Ed Sullivan, and the world was changed for ever. The next day, jazz was relegated to the smallest clubs."

Harper has a very Californian way of enthusing about his favourite records. He describes Elton John's Honky Chateau as "the shit, totally crucial". As an Elton John philistine, I ask him what the appeal is. "It's the songwriting. It was that troubadour period in the early 70s when you had James Taylor, Jackson Browne and Elton John hanging out on Sunset Boulevard and crafting great songs."

Another of Harper's favourite singer-songwriters is Jeff Buckley, whose career had hardly started when he drowned in 1997, aged 30. "People say he didn't get his dues, but you don't want too many dues on your first record, man," he says. "Of course, posthumously, it's going to build up because that's what happens. Fortunately for all of us, he made his first record when he was in his late 20s, after he had been playing for years. Most people only really start finding themselves on their fifth or sixth record; Jeff was one of those guys who bypassed the early stages and went straight to the heart of the matter."

The Verve's two last albums, A Northern Soul and Urban Hymns, travel with Harper at all times. "They took a traditional rock format and made something really unique out of it. The strings on Urban Hymns - my God! The record is like a book. When I heard that they broke up I was upset like a little kid, but you've got to accept change."

Albums by Lee Perry and King Tubby, the pioneers of dub reggae, are also in the collection. "I grew up with the best of reggae, whether it was Jimmy Cliff or Augustus Pablo," says Harper. "The maddest I've ever seen my mum was when my parents got divorced and my dad took the records; everything from Hank Williams to Gregory Isaacs. That sealed the deal."

100th Window by Massive Attack and Sea Change by Beck have been on Ben Harper's stereo recently, but his favourite albums are still those rock classics from the early 70s.

"These days, I'm listening to music like I'm on magic mushrooms: with clarity. I can taste the sound of music now, and it's helping me get to that evasive musical quality of imperfection. With modern technology, it's hard to be imperfect. But when you play The Basement Tapes by the Band, or Ooh La La by the Faces, that's when you realise what music is supposed to feel like. It's a celebration of imperfection."