Quotes About Blues

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

Blues purists never cared for me. I don't worry about it. I think if it this way: When I made 'Three O' Clock Blues,' they were not there. The people out there made the tune. And blues purists just wrote about it. The people is who I'm trying to satisfy.

I think of rock 'n' roll as a combination of country blues and swing band music, not Chicago blues, and modern pop.

Blues is like the roux in a gumbo. People ask me if jazz always has the blues in it. I say, if it sounds good it does.

Everything comes from one thing, everything comes from the Spirit. Jazz would not exist had it not been for gospel music, the blues would not exist had it not been for spiritual blues, which goes back to slave songs our fore fathers were singing while they were out in the field. So it's all one continuous growth from one group of people. Of course jazz now is played by various cultures and colors around the world. But the stimulus is One Voice.

I call myself a blues singer, but you ain't never heard me call myself a blues guitar man.

But of course it's different now, the blues is no longer blues, it's green now.

The blues is something separate from what I do. They connect at certain spots, but blues is different. I wouldn't put it in with what my career has been. That would be a whole separate wing.

The words to country songs are very earthy like the blues. They're not as dressed up and the people are very honest and say, 'Look, I miss you darlin', so I went out and got drunk in this bar.' That's the way you say it. Where in Tin Pan Alley they would say, 'Oh I missed you darling, so I went to this restaurant and I sat down and had a dinner for one.' That's cleaned up now, you see? But country and blues tells it like it is.

It's never hard to sing the blues. Everyone in the world has the blues . . .

Of course, there are a lot of ways you can treat the blues, but it will still be the blues.

This is something I think that blues music, or folk music, and all those particular genres that have a perspective about life deal with - where the difficulties of life are seen as something that are very natural and nothing to be embarrassed about, and something that we all go through; something that's part of our share of humanity. And it accepts those difficulties and pain as such. I think there's a wonderful forgiveness that can come over you, if you have that perspective on it.

Once you discover that you can, then you must. And it's not easy. You have to take direct steps. You really have to count your blessings and you have to make a decided effort to not get seduced by the blues.

I started playing ukulele first for 2 years from age 9 to 11 and got my first guitar and got inspired by blues I heard on the radio that turned me on and I started learning myself.

A lot of people relate me to the blues but I don't think it's a hindrance at this point. I've been doing it long enough that I can do different things and be accepted.

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

I just hope I'm remembered as a good blues musician.

I like to listen the blues and some classical.

Visually Agincourt is a pre-Raphaelite, perhaps better a Medici Gallery print battle - a composition of strong verticals and horizontals and a conflict of rich dark reds and Lincoln greens against fishscale greys and arctic blues.

So from Jazz, Blues, R&B, Soul, Classical and Country music, Hip Hop has introduced us to a little bit of everything.

Elvis Presley's death deprives our country of a part of itself. He was unique, irreplaceable. More than twenty years ago, he burst upon the scene with an impact that was unprecedented and will probably never be equaled. His music and his personality, fusing the styles of white country and black rhythm and blues, permanently changed the face of American popular culture. His following was immense. And he was a symbol to people the world over of the vitality, rebelliousness and good humor of this country.

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.

I visited New York in '63, intending to move there, but I noticed that what I valued about jazz was being discarded. I ran into `out-to-lunch' free jazz, and the notion that groove was old-fashioned. All around the United States, I could see jazz becoming linear, a horn-player's world. It made me realize that we were not jazz musicians; we were territory musicians in love with all forms of African-American music. All of the musicians I loved were territory musicians, deeply into blues and gospel as well as jazz.

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

When I was about 12, I knew I wanted to be a musician. The blues had so much emotion and so much feeling; if you don't have that, you're not going to be good at it.

African American music can't happen in Germany or in Italy or in Mumbai. If America disappeared off the face of the Earth today, the greatest single cultural loss would be blues, jazz, hip-hop, R&B, rock-and-roll.

The blues are real important. It's where most of the hard rock n' roll came from.

I'm an Australian, and when I grew up much of my influences were American - blues music and country music, all that sort of thing.

I liked the more sophisticated urban style of blues like Ray Charles and B. B. King, Bobby Blue Bland, Lou Rawls; people like that with more of a tendency toward jazz.

The blues are three L's - living , loving and hopefully, laughing.

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.

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.

The next thing I knew, I was out of the service and making movies again. My first picture was called, GI Blues. I thought I was still in the army.

You bat your baby blues at tall, dark, and gruesome, and next thing you know, he's trailing you like a lost puppy.

For me, music is in no way ornamental or decorative, it's constitutive of who I am. And that's why, when I say I'm a blues man, that's a very serious vocation - to muster the courage to find your own unique voice, to forge your distinctive style in the world, to leave your imprint in the sands of time in such a way that your singularity, your individuality, remains something that people have to come to terms with.

The parallel development in American blues to the British movement has resulted in Johnny Winters.

Did you ever see an unhappy horse? Did you ever see bird that had the blues? One reason why birds and horses are not unhappy is because they are not trying to impress other birds and horses.

What really brought out the voice that I have, my soul voice and true voice, was really not getting any work and being very sad and being poor and having to sit with that. I think that's where the blues comes from.

"Subterranean Homesick Blues" [of Bob Dylan] captures, in word-salad format, life in an encroaching police state.

Catch a boat to England baby, maybe to Spain. Wherever I have gone, wherever I've been and gone, wherever I have gone... The blues are all the same.

I smoked this joint and then it hit me. I thought, what you gotta do is play your own simply blues.

I was competing for attention in a four-piece band that was phenomenal, and I was trying to attack the blues from a kind of white English viewpoint as a singer.

I think ultimately, people are selfish in that department [blues], in a good way - the reason we're attracted to art is because it somehow reflects us. And I think, ultimately, we're a tribal people by nature. We're not individualistic. We almost like to hear that there's other people in a worse state than us. Sometimes even more than we like hearing there are people in better states than us.

You don't need the frills and thrills to make something amazing. I think that's what inspires me with the blues.

Blues is to jazz what yeast is to bread--without it, it's flat.

God, I'm just a fat bald guy, 60 years old, singing the blues, you know?

As I got older though I wanted a life of my own. The classical training was very demanding and thorough. It was a very sheltered existence. Even though I heard blues and gospel on the radio sometimes, it was always back to the piano and study and give recitals.

The music that I have always liked has always been more rooted in anger or sadness or alienation or any of those inspirational factors that drove rock'n'roll, gospel, and blues. I tend not to value a more pop aesthetic.