Top 49 Quotes & Sayings by Dr. John

The locals are always going to want the traditions to stay alive. I just hope we can do something about them politicians.

My dad always pointed out Louis Armstrong's pad when we passed by there. And me and my dad were both proud Louis Armstrong was from New Orleans.

Right after Katrina, we did 'Sippiana Hericane.' I was real upset with everything.

The whole Lower Ninth Ward hasn't really recovered, but I feel a good spirit in my heart that something is going on - music is coming back slowly.

That this city has second lines - it's something I'm proud of. When the bands come back from the cemetery, they'll play something up - something like 'I'll Be Glad When You're Dead (You Rascal You)' - that will bring the people back to life.

I been trying to clean up my act with my children for a long time. And I pretty much got them all talking to me now. And they accept me as a humanoid again.

It was the first time I was looking, really, right after the storm, that I saw maybe the amount of devastation that had happened in the Lower Ninth Ward. Where my friends lived, which was about six blocks from where the industrial canal was, houses was smashed into houses, and there were, like, four houses smashed together.

There was segregated unions, which was a real problem for me because - especially as I was working in the recording scene, I had flack from the white union for hiring black musicians. I had flack from the black musician by hiring white musicians.

It's about knowing how to make a groove happen and keep it going so others can play off it.

The less said about Inner Space Fungus the better. I've still got the tapes in my house, but I'm afraid to play them back for fear that bacterial growth will take over my house.

Doc has been my name all my life, and John is my middle name. I'm proud of all my names - Malcolm John Michael Creaux Rebennack. I'm proud of them names.

I hung at the studio. Myself and James Booker and several other musicians, as kids, we just literally hung at the studio, hoping somebody would get sick or get hurt and that we'd get to sub for them.

There was a lot of freedom, so bands in those days did not have to play for the public. They played for club owners that enjoyed music. You know, what happened - there was a lot of clubs that had bebop music or different forms of music. It was great for musicians.

New Orleans cats don't play a lot of solos unless they got something to say. It's not an ego thing like it is with some other musicians. You say what you gotta say and then shut up.

Like the tangled veins of cypress roots that meander this way and that in the swamp, everything in New Orleans is interrelated, wrapped around itself in ways that aren't always obvious.

The old-timers schooled me good. They brainwashed me to respect music, whether we were playing rockabilly or blues or rock and roll.

I had somebody call and make a joke about it: 'Oh, Buddy Guy won the Grammy - You should have won.' I said, 'No. Buddy should have won it.' He's a very talented cat. And don't forget, he's my homeboy, too.

It's obvious some people don't have an emotional thing for the music.

I was criticized by some people for my first album because they said I was taking sacred music. They knew nothing about what I was doing. That was no sacred music; that's music I wrote.

I strongly believe that Professor Longhair playing just instrumentals would be just as effective as stylized vocals; that's how much I believe in his music.

See, I don't know nothing about singing. I never wanted to be a frontman. Frontmen had big egos and was always crazy and aggravating. I just never thought that was a good idea.

Indigenous peoples was messed over. It was like a tradition here. We broke every treaty with them that ever was written. I think Andrew Jackson wanted to wipe them out.

That's one of the reason T-Bone Burnett calls me... he thinks I'm used to doing what I do in the studio for him.

Where Charlie Christian left off, Papoose started a new thing; he was an innovator of the guitar. The things he did during his recording career with Fats Domino in the Fifties and Sixties until the day he died was as much a part of the music of New Orleans as anybody else has had to offer.

When I first started, I didn't know what I was doing. I was such a - like a kid that got into things before I was ready. I was like the original learning-on-the-job-experience guy. All I knew was, if I hired the best musicians, I got the best arranger, and got the right songs for the right singer, I had did my job correctly.

The events which transpired five thousand years ago; Five years ago or five minutes ago, have determined what will happen five minutes from now; five years From now or five thousand years from now. All history is a current event.

You wanna do some livin' before you die. Do it down in New Orleans.

History is not everything, but it is a starting point. History is a clock that people use to tell there political and cultural time of day. It is also a compass that people use to find themselves on the map of human geography. History tells a people where they have been and what they have been, where they are and what they are. Most important, history tells a people where they still must go, what they still must be. The relationship of history to the people is the same as the relationship of a mother to her child.

I started out with the guitar and was a studio musician back in the 50s, and then got shot in my finger.

We all, if we go with ego I go or you go ego thing, it's got to be free from all of that and just roll, because music is a spiritual thing. It's got to come through us and can't just hit us. It's got to be part of us that comes through us and goes to the people, and then they come back to us and give us more spirit.

The Nuclear Industry is conducting a war against humanity.

When I was a little kid wanting to play music, it was because of people like Pete Johnson, Huey Smith, Allen Toussaint, Professor Longhair, James Booker, Art Neville ... there was so many piano players I loved in New Orleans. Then there was guys from out of town that would come cut there a lot. There was so many great bebop piano players, so many great jazz piano players, so many great Latin piano players, so many great blues piano players. Some of those Afro-Cuban bands had some killer piano players. There was so many different things going on musically, and it was all of interest to me.

Corruption at every level, city, state, federal, all has helped in making New Orleans a disaster area, the most disappearing land mass on the planet Earth.

I think that any of the places that's cut off from money, things come up, what the people have to rely on.

Marvin Gaye was a killer drummer. I think he just played during the soundchecks and he'd have another guy sing his parts while he played the drums. He just wanted to play the drums and have some fun.

In 1972, I recorded Gumbo, an album that was both a tribute to and my interpretation of the music I had grown up with in New Orleans in the 1940s and 1950s. I tried to keep a lot of the little changes that were characteristic of New Orleans, while working my own funknology on piano and guitar.

I always seemed to be in the right place at the wrong time.

My mom was beautiful; she was supposed to be the original Jane in the original Tarzan movie. They asked her to put her foot in the water and there was an alligator in there, and she wouldn't put her foot in the water.

In the network's mind there are no limits.

I've been thinking a lot lately about taking chances, and how it's really just about overcoming your fears. Because the truth is, everytime you take a big risk in your life, no matter how it ends up, you're always glad you took it.

See, I dont know nothing about singing. I never wanted to be a frontman. Frontmen had big egos and was always crazy and aggravating. I just never thought that was a good idea.

The specter of color is apparent even when it goes unmentioned, and it is all too often the unseen force that influences public policy as well as private relationships. There is nothing more remarkable than the ingenuity that the various demarcations of the color line reflect. If only the same creative energy could be used to eradicate the color line; then its days would indeed be numbered.

Stress is the inability to adapt to a changing environment.

Powerful people never educate powerless people in what they need that they can use to take the power away from powerful people; it's too much to expect. If I was in power, I would not educate people in how to take my powers away.

When the voice and the vision on the inside is more profound, and more clear and loud than all opinions on the outside, you've begun to master your life.

When I was a little bitty kid, my aunt showed me how to play a little boogie. It took me years. I had to play the left-hand part with two hands, because my hands was so little. Then as I grew up and I learned how to play the left-hand part with one hand, she showed me how to play the right-hand part, and et cetera. My Uncle Joe showed me how to play a little bit different boogie stuff. I had people in my family that was professional musicians, but I just wasn't interested in what they did. I wasn't very open-minded to a lot of music that I'd be more open to today.

If we don't be going strong, we're going weak, and we can't afford to go weak. We've got too many problems to do that.

I'd rather have the whole world against me than my own soul.

Everybody in my neighborhood in the '40s, they played pianos. That's how people partied. They didn't try the TV, the radio was OK, records was cool, but when people wanted to party, they got around a piano. My mother played piano, my sister played. I've been around a lot of piano all my life.