Quotes About Blues

I learned jazz; that comes from blues. I learned rock; that comes from blues. I learned pop; that comes from blues. Even dance, that comes from blues, with the answer-and-response.

I love songs, and I love songwriting, and there's a standard of songwriting within Chicago blues in particular. I don't like the sad blues, necessarily; the Chicago blues is what I like, which is the kind of blues you can dance to.

After my early days of being a passionate young Elvis fan, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, etc. I got interested in Ray Charles and Ella Fitzgerald. Then I got turned on to the blues. I realized how important it was to our music in England at the time. Everyone was into the blues. Then you start looking at the different kinds of blues, and you follow the journey backwards from Chicago to earlier times back down to the Delta to the Memphis Blues.

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

If they played more blues, people would just get it - they try to hold it back but just about can't hold it back now because the blues is really going.

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 am so weak over love and heartbreak. My music is rhythm and blues and with that said, the blues element of it is a major portion. I feel like it has been lost in R&B and a lot of people are scared to talk about their vulnerabilities and insecurities. They want to keep it up and in the club.

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.

But black folks have never really been optimists. We've been prisoners of hope, and hope is qualitatively different from optimism in the way that there's a difference between The Blues and Lawrence Welk. The Blues and Jazz have to do with hope while the other is sugarcoated music which has to do with sentimental optimism.

I have an elaborate wind-down ritual, which combines reading, ESPN, movies, and jamming the blues on my keyboard. There's still a part of me that's a little kid who is psyched because I no longer have a bedtime!

I like blues but it is music I am too ignorant to understand.

In 1940 I came across a record by Jimmy Yancey. I can't say how important that record is. From then on, all I wanted to do was play the blues.

You can sing the blues in church if you use the words right.

It was just like Howlin' Wolf. Once you arrive at the point that you understand it, the emotional factor is darker than some of the saddest blues stuff.

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.

Just a lot of those bands [like The Blue Jean Committee] started off in blues, and then they all transformed into other kinds.

Rock & Roll is so great, people should start dying for it. You don't understand. The music gave you back the beat so you could dream. A whole generation running with a Fender bass...The people just have to die for the music. People are dying for everything else, so why not the music? Die for it. Isn't it pretty? Wouldn't you die for something pretty?Perhaps I should die. After all, all the great blues singers did die. But life is getting better now.I don't want to die. Do I? - Lou Reed (1965-1968)

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.

Most people say, 'Well, Earl, you sing the blues,' or however they want to categorize it. I just sing songs.

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.

And a lot of the technique and the little T-Bone phrases that define his style, Chuck Berry, when he rearranged the beat, they became rock 'n roll guitar licks. So in essence, T-Bone was not only the first electric blues guitar player, but he was the first electric rock 'n roll guitar player, really.

You learn from music, from watching great athletes at work - how disciplined they are, how they move. You learn these things by watching a shortstop at work, how he concentrates on one thing at a time. You learn from classic music, from the blues and jazz, from bluegrass. From all this, you learn how to sustain a great line without bringing in unnecessary words.

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.

If you're an impressionistic painter and you want to paint expressionism, you've got to change. You've got to figure out a way to do it and do it. If you've been playing jazz all your life and you want to start to play rock n' roll, blues, then do it.

The rhythm persisted, the unfaltering common meter of blues, but the blueness itself, the sorrow, the despair, began to give way to hope.

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

I'm sure there are a few things in my CD collection that might surprise people. I like classical music, the blues, and I'm a big fan of alternative rock.

I've never been an all-black girl. I like pinks and blues and greens. If you come over to my closet, you'll be able to find a rainbow of things to wear.

The idea of a hypnotic riff as the prime mover of a piece of music has been around for a long time, whether you're talking about the Delta blues or music from Middle Eastern and African cultures.

Up north, you could find these radio stations with no name on the dials that played pre-rock 'n' roll things - country blues. We would hear Slim Harpo or Lightnin' Slim and gospel groups, the Dixie Hummingbirds, the Five Blind Boys of Alabama. I was so far north, I didn't even know where Alabama was.

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

When I was growing up, the blues did seem too simple to me. I was just a muso.

So, rap has that quality, for youth anyway; it's a kind of blues element. It's physical, almost gymnastic. It speaks to you organically. Rap grows out of what young people really are today, not only black youth, but white - everybody.

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.

Most of the songs I sing have that blues feeling in it. They have that sorry feeling. And I don't know what I'm sorry about. I don't.

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 was pissed off about a lot of things...so much shitty rock ’n’ roll that angered me, and Pussy Galore was kicking against that. With the Blues Explosion, there was some of that, but now I was into celebrating it.

Don't waste your time away thinkin' 'bout yesterday's blues.

It is necessary to introduce light vibrations, represented by reds and yellows, and a sufficient amount of blues, to obtain an airy feeling.

I must feel the fire of my soul so my intellectual blues can set others on fire.

My musical taste has always been wide. I started out as a folky before I moved on to blues and soul.

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?

The American press has the blues. Too many authorities have assured it that its days are numbered, too many good newspapers are in ruins.

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

Before I left, I opened a lot of doors for a lot of people to play the blues.

The last thing that the blues needs is another smart-ass white boy with an attitude.

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

Rock ’n roll is really swing with a modern name. It began on the levees and plantations, took in folk songs, and features blues and rhythm. It's the rhythm that gets to the kids – they're starved of music they can dance to, after all those years of crooners.