A Quote by Lenny Henry

I listen to lots of blues records and some of them are funny. BB King's 'How Blue Can You Get' is hilarious. — © Lenny Henry
I listen to lots of blues records and some of them are funny. BB King's 'How Blue Can You Get' is hilarious.
When you think blues, you think BB King. Even a young kid can look at a picture of BB King and say, 'the blues.' The man is more than a musician. He's a monument.
Snoop Dogg is hilarious. T.I. is really funny. Who else? 50 Cent is hilarious. Jay-Z is funny. I've met him, but he's funny in interviews. He was funny when I saw him, too. Ludacris is funny. Everybody is. Rappers are funny, a lot of them.
I love the music from Nat King Cole, BB King, Albert King... When I think of it, I wouldn't mind being renamed Angus King.
I'd go over to friends' houses and ask them to put on some Howlin' Wolf, and they wouldn't know what I was talking about. Then, when they would come over to my house, I'd play them some blues. Their parents wouldn't let them come back. The blues were still called 'race records' back then.
One of my favorite things to do is sit around and listen to old records... You're forced to listen to the whole thing. And it's so cool digging through the bins trying to find them. I get giddy about records.
I'm a fan of records you get and you listen to them from beginning to finish - records where everything is there for a purpose. There was never any filler on those records - it was all well planned out.
At an early age I was listening to BB King, what have you. Ray Charles, Jimmy Smith, Jimmy Mcgriff, you dig? With the obvious Marvin Gayes and the Motown records.
I was living and working with adult men who were playing a real art form. And I had been playing blues all my life. As soon as I formed my first band, we played Jimmy Reed stuff. So it wasn't like I was a white kid who was learning the blues from B.B. King records.
My parents had this massive record player in the living room, a 'blue spot grand' they called it... it used up an entire rainforest to make this thing, and it had all these records in it. Some were rock, some were reggae, but a lot was blues - Ray Charles, Chuck Berry and all that stuff.
So how do people listen to music? How do the broad masses listen to it? Apparently they have to be able to cling to pictures and 'moods' of some kind. If they can't imagine a green field, a blue sky or something of the sort, then they are out of their depth.
Some people buy records just to dance to 'em. Some people buy records to listen to the radio. And there's people that buy records 'cause they listen to every song.
I had just discovered jazz, and I started singing in a kind of blues cover band at the age of 15. We called ourselves - it was a terrible name - the Blue Zoots. We couldn't actually get our hands on zoot suits, nor did we dress in blue. We did covers of Screamin' Jay Hawkins and kind of Blues Brothers repertoire stuff.
People are always trying to tell you how they feel. Some of them say it outright, and some of them, they tell you with their actions. And you have to listen. I don't know what will happen with your lady friend. I think she's a nice person, and I hope you get what you want. But do me a favor: Listen, and don't ignore what you hear.
I'm a bluesman moving through a blues-soaked America, a blues-soaked world, a planet where catastrophe and celebration... "Joy and Pain" - sit side by side. The blues started off in some field, in some plantation, in some mind, in some imagination, in some heart. The blues blew over to the next plantation, and then the next state. The blues went south to north, got electrified and even sanctified. The blues got mixed up with jazz and gospel and rock and roll.
I get to listen to a lot of this music again doing my DJ work on Little Steven's Underground Garage. To hear Van [Morrison] on Them's version of "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue"- what a vocal, and what an arrangement. Also, I get to hear so many records that I missed the first time around - The Chocolate Watchband, Roky Erikson. It's an audio food fest, a total privilege, a second chance.
Yes; my brother Bobby used to distribute records at King Records. I had a job there, too, packing records up and shipping them off. But I always wanted to play sessions at Stax, so I figured out a way to do it.
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