A Quote by Big Bill Broonzy

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.

Big Bill Broonzy

Quote Topics

Blues Cry Fact Fellow Forgotten Get Lawyers Live Lives Natural Now People Something Talk Things Young Young People

Quote Author

Big Bill Broonzy
American - Composer
June 26, 1893 - August 15, 1958

There are happy blues, sad blues, lonesome blues, red-hot blues, mad blues, and loving blues. Blues is a testimony to the fullness of life.

Corey Harris

I have heartaches, I have blues. No matter what you got, the blues is there. 'Cause that's all I know - the blues. And I can sing the blues so deep until you can have this room full of money and I can give you the blues.

John Lee Hooker

Blues is my life. It's a true feeling that comes from the heart, not something that just comes out of my mouth. Blues is what I love, and blues is what I always do.

Koko Taylor

The blues? Why, the blues are a part of me. They're like a chant. The blues are like spirituals, almost sacred. When we sing blues, we're singing out our hearts, we're singing out our feelings. Maybe we're hurt and just can't answer back, then we sing or maybe even hum the blues. When I sing, 'I walk the floor, wring my hands and cry -- Yes, I walk the floor, wring my hands and cry,'... what I'm doing is letting my soul out.

Alberta Hunter

There's no way in the world I can feel the same blues the way I used to. When I play in Chicago, I'm 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.

Muddy Waters

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.

Mose Allison

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.

Muddy Waters

A lot of people think the blues is depressing but that's not the blues I'm singing. When I'm singing blues, I singing life. People can't stand to listen to the blues, they've got to be phonies.

Etta James

People think the blues is sad. They hear people moaning and such. That's not the blues. That's just somebody singing slow...The blues is about truth-telling.

Alberta Hunter

The blues scale was the first thing I learned. It's just a pentatonic scale with a flat seventh and a few notes that sound cool when you bend them. And because people have amalgamated the blues into this rock-blues scale, if you're using it, you better sound like a real authentic blues player.

Steve Vai

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.

Joe Louis Walker

The blues records of each decade explain something about the philosophical basis of our lives as black people. ... Blues is a basis of historical continuity for black people. It is a ritualized way of talking about ourselves and passing it on.

Sherley Anne Williams

The blues brings you back into the fold. The blues isn't about the blues, it's about we have all had the blues and we are all in this together.

Peter Tork

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

Derek Bailey

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.