Quotes About Blues

I don't remember any impression [from blues].The blues was just everywhere in the Mississippi Delta. It was mostly black sharecroppers living there, and there was a lot of blues around. Sometimes the guys would sing the blues in the fields, working.

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.

Singing about your sadness unburdens your soul. But the blues hollers shouted about more than being sad. They were also delivering messages in musical code. If the master was coming, you might sing a hidden warning to the other field hands . . . The blues could warn you what was coming. I could see the blues was about survival.

It's no doubt that there's a connection (between the blues and hip-hop). Hip-hop is definitely a child of the blues. And I think you gotta know the roots to really grow. It's like knowing your parents, it's like knowing your culture, so you could be proud of that culture and take it to the world.

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.

People have been brainwashed into believing that it's got to be down or it wouldn't be blues. But it's not so. It's got to be a fact or it wouldn't be blues.

See, that's nothing but blues, that's all I'm singing about. It's today's blues.

I listened to King Oliver and I listened to Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, John Coltrane, Archie Shepp... I listened to everything I could that came from that place that they call the blues but, in formality, isn't necessarily the blues.

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

My greatest influence has been the blues. And that's a literary influence, because I think the blues is the best literature that we as black Americans have.

When the slaves left Africa, they left us this music. They left us blues.

The world has made everything else and still it can't make peace. And the reason it can't make peace is because of the evil, ignorance and stupidity. I have songs that explain these facts. And that's the blues.

If I'm at a party and someone puts on a Blues Brothers tape, I tend to go nuts.

As a guitar player, you can gravitate to the blues because you can play it easily. It's not a style that's difficult to pick up. It's purely emotive and dead easy to get a start with.

I like to listen the blues and some classical.

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.

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.

The blues is a hopeful music. It helps you process something rather than avoid it. It's like mourning, in essence.

There was a time when black and navy blue suits were pretty much everything you saw. That has completely changed. People are wearing big checks, checks with browns and blues and shades of gray, and the scale is very large, and some of them are very bold with heavy contrasts.

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

A lot of blues guitarists play with only three fingers, and they can't figure out certain runs that require the use of their little fingers. Classical training is good for that.

When you look at so much of what we all love, there's either soul-based to it, or it's the blues. It's really the beginnings of any kind of music. It really is; it all starts there. Because after that, it's music of the moment.

You got to pay your dues if you want to sing the blues...And you know it don't come easy.

I wanted to know everything about the blues. I think it constantly changes for me.

Back in the day in my teens I was listening to Joe Pass and Wes Montgomery a lot; before that I was listening to what I would call now the more 'simple' jazz players (but still very valid), like Barney Kessell or Johnny Smith; I learnt a lot of voicings from Johnny Smith records. Now, I listen to the old blues players; that's what you'd hear in my house if there was music on. It would be Albert Collins or Albert King.

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

I'm not good enough to be playin' much acoustic guitar onstage. Man, you gotta get so right; I mean, the tones, the feel, the sound. Plus, acoustic blues guitar is just that much harder on the fingers.

I had heard blues and jazz all my life but I was never aware that it was associated with nightclubs and drinking.

My people have very subtle slang, inflections and ways of saying things that has little to do with words. If you're from the same place, you'll feel the jargon and know exactly what's happening. Same with any neighborhood cat. What he sees and hears and feels and lives makes him what he is. That's what blues is.

All the classic jazz players all sang and a lot of 'em sang blues.

If you've got bad news, you want to kick them blues, cocaine.

Being a blues singer is like being black two times.

If you want to be a good blues singer, people are going to be down on you, so dress like you're going to the bank to borrow money.

The way Will Moore taught me, and the way I play it, the blues is just something different.

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

The writer loves the fog as it pours in; he loves the sun when the fog pours out. The rest of California is Beach Boys country, but San Francisco has that moody thing going on, those blues notes wrapped in moisture, an atmosphere that tempers California dreaming and makes life more real. The fog brings reality, but it is still a California reality, one spent outdoors the whole year round.

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.

My idea of heaven is a place where the Tyne meets the Delta, where folk music meets the blues.

But between sets I'd sneak over to the black places to hear blues musicians. It got to the point where I was making my living at white clubs and having my fun at the other places.

The translation process becomes a highly subjective thing - turning reds and blues into black-and-whiteness. It's really bizarre for me.

We're getting the blues about having to walk away from this whole thing. We enjoyed it a lot and it all felt good. We had a good experience on it. We thought we could do good work together. And it is unusual to get the next one, straight off the bed. John is funny. When he gets moving, he moves pretty quickly.

There was a cinema called The Orient outside the community centre where we rehearsed in Six Ways, and whenever it showed a horror film the queue would go all the way down the street and around the corner. 'Isn't it strange how people will pay money to frighten themselves?' I remember Tony [Iommi] saying one day. 'Maybe we should stop doing blues and write scary music instead.'

I worked mostly in television drama for my first few years. I just kept guesting on NYPD Blues and CSI-like stuff, so when I started getting work in comedy, a lot of people in the business would say, 'Oh - I didn't know you did comedy.'

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.

When you ain’t got no money, you got the blues.

All blues singers are great liars.

The early Stones were adolescent rockers. They were self-conscious in an obvious and unpretentious way. And they were committed to a musical style that needed no justification because it came so naturally to them. As they grew musically the mere repetition of old rock and blues tunes became increasingly less satisfying.