Quotes About Blues

I'm a bluesman moving through a blues-soaked America, a blues-soaked world, a planet where catastrophe and celebration... "Joy and Pain" - sit side by side. The blues started off in some field, in some plantation, in some mind, in some imagination, in some heart. The blues blew over to the next plantation, and then the next state. The blues went south to north, got electrified and even sanctified. The blues got mixed up with jazz and gospel and rock and roll.

Nowadays blues in particular has a wide, wide, wide, wide net of everything that's called blues. I think if somebody's coming to it in the last ten years or whatever, or even fifteen years, what their experience is what is called blues is different from mine. I have to expand my range of what's been called the blues. I think somebody who's new to it would have to go back and to see what is called blues now, where it came from. If that makes sense.

Theres no way in the world I can feel the same blues the way I used to. When I play in Chicago, Im playing up-to-date, not the blues I was born with. People should hear the pure blues - the blues we used to have when we had no money.

There was a time when I had the blues - I mean I really had it bad. I couldn't pay my light bill and I couldn't pay my rent and I really had the blues. But today I can pay my rent and I can pay the light bill and I still got the blues. So I must been born with 'em... That's my religion - the blues is my religion.

There's a lot of women in blues music, lots of strong women and that sort of stuff. It's not the first thing that comes to mind when you think about blues. There were a lot of powerful blues guitar players in the olden times that were women. It's just that when you think about blues, you have this one image in your mind.

All riddles are blues, / And all blues are sad, / And I'm only mentioning / Some blues I've had.

To me, the blues is an infection. I don't think it's necessarily a melancholy thing; the blues can be really positive and I think I think anyone and everyone can have a place for the blues. It need not always a woeful, sorrowful thing. It's more reflective; it reminds you to feel.

The blues is the foundation, and it's got to carry the top. The other part of the scene, the rock 'n' roll and the jazz, are the walls of the blues.

I like all the kinds of music I've been into. I'm certainly not a purist in that I will only play country licks in a country song or blues licks in blues stuff. The thing I would like to be able to do is to make the music sound right no matter what it is. If somebody else wants to have a label for it, then that's their business.

The early years when I was starting, blues player, you wasn't always welcome in a lot of the other places. People usually have preconceived ideas about blues music. They always feel that it's depressing and that it's just something that a guy sit out on a stool, grab a guitar, and just start singing or mumbling or whatever.

I wanna show that gospel, country, blues, rhythm and blues, jazz, rock 'n' roll are all just really one thing. Those are the American music and that is the American culture.

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 would sing the blues if I had the blues.

Blues is a natural fact, is something that a fellow lives. If you don't live it you don't have it. Young people have forgotten to cry the blues. Now they talk and get lawyers and things.

The blues comes right back to a person's feelings, to his daily activities in life. But rich people don't know nothing about the blues, please believe me.

I want to sing using a throatsinging style, like for example kargyraa, but at the same time sing it like a normal way. Maybe I will try some opera. To sing a melody, and to sing not only Tuvan traditional melodies, but I would like to try Western classics, blues. I think Tuvan music and American blues are very close to each other.

The blues is always there. It's going to be hard out here, but it's all right. It's all right, and that's what the blues teaches you. You got to roll with the punches and find your equilibrium.

Jazz is the big brother of the blues. If a guy's playing blues like we play, he's in high school. When he starts playing jazz it's like going on to college, to a school of higher learning.

I always wanted to do a story on the blues that not only reflected its nature and its content, but also alludes to the form itself…In short, a story that gives you the impression of the blues.

I remember the first time I was booked into a jazz club. I was scared to death. I'm not a jazz artist. So I got to the club and spotted this big poster saying, 'Richie Havens, folk jazz artist.' Then I'd go to a rock club and I'm billed as a 'folk rock performer' and in the blues clubs I'd be a 'folk blues entertainer.'

Blues artists now try and stay in a box. Back in the day at all the clubs you would see James Brown, Jimi Hendrix, The Isley Brothers, Little Richard and Etta James all play the same venues. It was a mix of funk, soul, blues and rock 'n' roll.

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

Most blues don't have a beginning, middle, or end. You just cut a couple slices of blues.

The jazz and blues clubs are like the jazz and blues musicians - they're disappearing.

The blues is an impulse to keep the painful details and episodes of a brutal experience alive in one's aching consciousness, to finger its jagged grain, and to transcend it, not by the consolation of philosophy but by squeezing from it a near-tragic, near-comic lyricism. As a form, the blues is an autobiographical chronicle of personal catastrophe expressed lyrically.

My mum's family would all get together, with guitars, harmonica, mandolins and upright bass and play old blues and folk songs. That was normal to me.

Singers come and go; the music business waxes and wanes. The blues are popular and unpopular, often at the same time.

Wherever I am in the world, I never get Sunday night blues. I suppose it's because I've never worked at any one thing long enough to start hating it.

Back in middle school, Catherine and I had gone through this stage where all we would read were fantasy books. We'd consume them like M&M's, by the fistful, J.R.R. Tolkien and Terry Brooks and Susan Cooper and Lloyd Alexander. Susan Boone looked, to me, like the queen of the elves (there's almost always an elf queen in fantasy books). I mean, she was shorter than me and had on a strange lineny outfit in pale blues and greens.

Jazz speaks for life. The Blues tell the story of life's difficulties.

I've always loved the blues, ever since I was a kid. It has a depth to it that a lot of contemporary music doesn't have. It has pain and suffering in it, but funny stories, too. And it is built on storytelling, which is something I really love.

It is from the blues that all that may be called American music derives it most distinctive characteristics.

I'll tell you a little secret about the Blues: it's not enough to know which notes to play, you have to know why they need to be played.

I guess that's why they call it the blues, time on my hands could be time spent with you.

The blues have always had some of the best times, best feelings I’ve ever had.

I think if it wasn't for the blues, there wouldn't be no jazz.

The blues he sends to meet me, won't defeat me. It won't be long til happiness steps up to greet me.

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

Inside the museum infinity goes up on trial. Voices echo, 'This is what salvation must be like after a while.' But Mona Lisa must have had the highway blues; you can tell by the way she smiles.

I don't even think whether I play the blues or not, I just play whatever feels right at the moment.

Punk is an attitude, not a genre, age group, or time period. What's interesting is trying to define the blues and punk in different ways. They are very close cousins.

What originally established the band was cover songs like Not Fade Away. Then, later on, we got more well-known ones like Satisfaction, which you might say echoed the thinking of, well, any generation you care to name, including the present one. But we didn't set out on bits of paper that we were going to be the voice of a generation. The original aim of the Rolling Stones was to play blues. It wasn't even to play rock music.

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.

I was addicted to rhythm 'n' blues pretty much directly into folk music. I had my little 45s of mostly black artists. That was as close as I got. I've never listened to heavy rock or stuff that jangles my nerves, because I'm already jangled.

Comedy is the blues for people who can’t sing.

Mona Lisa must have had the highway blues; you can tell by the way she smiles.

We're not like a nostalgia act, or the normal classic rock act - we're a really good musical organization, ... You're going to hear some blues, some jazz, a little of everything. The guys in the band are great musicians. When we play, we're there for real. It's not about posing, strutting in tights, that kind of stuff. It's all about music, and I've always respected my audience that way.

Asleep by the Smiths Vapour Trail by Ride Scarborough Fair by Simon & Garfunkel A Whiter Shade of Pale by Procol Harum Dear Prudence by the Beatles Gypsy by Suzanne Vega Nights in White Satin by the Moody Blues Daydream by Smashing Pumpkins Dusk by Genesis (before Phil Collins was even in the band!) MLK by U2 Blackbird by the Beatles Landslide by Fleetwood Mac Asleep by the Smiths (again!) -Charlie's mixtape