Quotes About Blues

I think the blues is fine for blues players, but free blues has never made much sense to me.

When we sing the blues, we're singin' out our hearts, we're singing out our feelings. Maybe we're hurt and just can't answer back, then we sing or maybe even hum the blues.

I'm John Lee Hooker in the sense that he was a blues man and he played blues his whole life. I'm a rock guy and I'm going to play rock music my whole life.

I would think, to me, growing up in the south, growing up with all the gospel music, singing in the church and having that rhythm and blues - the blues background was my big inspiration.

I didn't really grow up listening to blues, because I grew up in the Northwest. It wasn't really the center for blues.

You don't have to live the blues to play the blues.

Most Americans have a sense of what the blues is. But in Hong Kong, they have no sense of the blues.

I wouldn't think a blues album would be that commercially successful, but I don't really care. I'd do it for the love of blues, not for the money. I've got plenty of money.

I'm crazy about James Brown. I'm crazy about soul music. And then the blues. Rhythm and blues.

You better change your ways / And get really wild. / I want to tell you something / I wouldn't tell you no lie. / Wild women are the only kind / That really get by, / 'Cause Wild Women don't worry / Wild Women don't get the blues.

When I die, I want them to play The Black and Crazy Blues, I want to be cremated, put in a bag of pot and I want beautiful people to smoke me and hope they got something out of it.

I like to listen the blues and some classical.

There's a difference between the blues of the New Orleans guys and anyone else and the difference is in a chord, but I can't figure the name of it. It's a different chord, and they all make it.

I remember listening to like gospel-y blues tunes. I'd just listen to the rhythm and the music was upbeat. Always upbeat if you get like a good rhythm you can nod your head. You just feel good. But then when you listen to the lyrics it was quite sad.

I never, with my eyes, saw the mistreatment of any black person. Not once. Where we lived was all farmers. The blacks worked for the farmers. I hoed cotton with them. I'm with the blacks, because we're white trash. We're going across the field.... They're singing and happy. I never heard one of them, one black person, say, I tell you what: These doggone white people - not a word!... Pre-entitlement, pre-welfare, you say: Were they happy? They were godly; they were happy; no one was singing the blues.

Jazz is like blues with a shot of heroin!

Misery colored by the greens and blues in my mother's voice took away all the grief out of the words and left me with a conviction that pain was not only endurable, it was sweet.

As far as I'm concerned, blues and jazz are the great American contributions to music.

Warm evenings, pale mornings, bottle of blues

I have learned as much about writing about my people by listening to blues and jazz and spirituals as I have by reading novels.

In order to play jazz, you have to be able to play the blues.

All of my favorite songs can bring me to tears. Some are rock, some are blues, some are love ballads. That's why I play music - to touch other people as I have been touched.

I wanted to be a blues guitar player. And a singer. And a songwriter. Not a shock jock.

I suppose I was waiting until I was old enough to have some sort of experience to sing about. When you're young, it's hard to sing the blues. Nobody believes you.

Humor is most powerful thing that uses laughter as it base to chase your blues away.

At Carnegie Hall the Preservation Hall Jazz Band showed how easily it could hop from era to era. It could work like a rhythm-and-blues horn section or a tightly arranged little big band if need be, but it could also switch back into the polyphonic glories of vintage New Orleans jazz, in which nearly every instrument seems to improvise around the tune at the same time.

That's where my influences lie, in the blues with people like Muddy Waters and Tina Turner. At first I didn't really like the idea of working with synthesizers but now I think they're fun, there are no restrictions. Not that I understand how they work.

There are only two kinds of songs; there's the blues, and there's zip-a-dee-doo-dah.

Zeppelin were a blues band but [also] so much more, [as were] The Stones.

The Blues scene now is international. In the '50s it was purely something that you would hear in black clubs, played by black musicians, especially in America. But from the '60s onwards it changed

Solace? That's why God made fermented beverages and the blues.

I really don't. I have truly eclectic taste in music and I seem to cycle through phases in terms of to what's inspiring me. I'll go from Beethoven to Sigur Ros; World Music, Brit-pop, Classic Rock, Blues/Jazz, even the odd bit of Heavy metal.

I feel like the blues is actually some kind of documentary of the past and the present - and something to give people inspiration for the future.

I've been on a real Credence Clearwater kick. I've been collecting their albums on CD -- right now I really like 'I Put a Spell on You.' I don't know who actually wrote it; it might be a traditional, or like, an old blues song, I haven't looked in the liner notes, but it's the first song on their first album. I love all the hits; I mean @#$%&, I like every one of them. I think my favorite song by John Fogerty is 'Have You Ever Seen the Rain?' They're my favorite American band of all time, totally.

The white music was melodic and pretty, and you had beautiful women's voices like Gogi Grant and even the Andrews Sisters. Then I went directly to rhythm and blues, which had beautiful voices but not much melody in particular and pretty much the same chord pattern. I loved it, I was entrenched in it, but then folk music came in the middle of that for me, and made its own path. And it was part of the rebellion against bubblegum music, or music that is pretty but doesn't say anything.

I wouldn't count myself as being a true blues guitarist because I feel you have to live it.

Another thing to do with the blues is how they were recorded. They were done on the quick, and some of that stuff was made on wire, not even tape, let alone digital.

I think the blues will always be around. People need it.

If you don't feel the blues, then you're not listening. Then you're just a professor or something.

No. The blues are because you're getting fat and maybe it's been raining too long, you're just sad that's all. The mean reds are horrible. Suddenly you're afraid and you don't know what you're afraid of. Do you ever get that feeling?

James Brown opened at least six of our House of Blues clubs. He always delivered, but he demanded the respect of an emperor. But, come on, he's James Brown ! ... I got to play on stage with him. Did he ever fine me ? (Brown was known to fine players for flubbing notes or steps) - I would have loved to have been fined by James Brown !

I must confess that waltzes do not move me, I guess I hummed the blues too early, and spent too many midnights out wailing to the rain.

John Lewis has great history as a civil rights fighter.As a young man, he was one of the guys out there who was leading the parades during the [Martin Luther] King [Jr.] era. So, we all respect his history. But then I hear him crying the blues about Mr. [Donald] Trump and saying he's an illegitimate president, I take offense to that. If it's illegitimate, why is he going on?

Logically, when you talkin' about folk music and blues, you find out it's music of just plain people.

My uncle was 16, in junior high, and he heard me singing and snatched me off the stage. I thought he was happy and was going to pat me on the head and say I was good. But he took me home and told my grandmother this youngin' was at school singing the blues.

Some musicians play blues, others classical jazz or bluegrass. I like to play political roles because I can merge my political interests with my creative interests.

My definition of Blues is that it's a musical form which is very disciplined and structured coupled with a state of mind, and you can have either of those things but it's the two together that make it what it is. And you need to be a student for one, and a human being for the other, but those things alone don't do it.

The music pot is broad. It's just unfortunate that the record companies cry the blues as frequently as they do.