A Quote by Ma Rainey
White folks hear the blues come out, but they don't know how it got there.
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White folks needs what black folks got just as much as black folks needs what white folks got, and we's all got to stay here mongst each other and git along, that's what.
We're not going to play the blues anymore. Let the white folks play the blues. They got 'em, so they can keep 'em.
When the blues came out, it was something pure and undefined, but when all these white groups got hold of it, it became something else that didn't sound anything like the original. So you had Led Zeppelin doing their thing, which had come all the way from the blues.
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.
All B.S. aside, it all comes down to... we got to survive. I mean, even warriors put their spears down on Sundays. We got to survive here in this country... 'cause I'm not going back to Africa. We got to survive here. And for us to survive here-White folks, Black folks, Korean folks, Mexican folks, Puerto Ricans-we got to understand each other.
We Logans don't have much to do with white folks. You know why? 'Cause white folks mean trouble.
You know, I really feel a responsibility to the music, and I teach workshops in music sometimes. And folks do come to me and they go, 'How do I make this blues song my own? How do I feel like I'm not an impostor doing this?' And I'm like, 'That's an excellent question.' That's where you should start, where you go, 'How does this speak to me?'
I think that the blues is in everything, so it's not possible to neglect it. You hear somebody go 'Ooh ooh oooh,' and that's the blues. You hear a rock n' roll song. That's the blues. Somebody playing a guitar solo? They're playing the blues.
The expectation of my life was that I might be able to work for some good white folks. Now I got some good white folks working for me.
Sure, I get the blues. But what I try to do, is apply joy to the blues, you know? I don't know if it's a technique, or just being bent that way, being raised by the folks I was raised by.
As long as the colored man look to white folks to put the crown on what he say . . . as long as he looks to white folks for approval . . . then he ain't never gonna find out who he is and what he's about.
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.
Grown people know that they do not always know the why of things, and even if they think they know, they do not know where and how they got the proof. Hence the irritation they show when children keep on demanding to know if a thing is so and how the grown folks got the proof of it. It is so troublesome because it is disturbing to the pigeonhole way of life.
I want to yell so loud that Baby Girl can hear me that dirty ain't a color, disease ain't the Negro side a town. I want to stop that moment from coming - and it come in ever white child's life - when they start to think that colored folks ain't as good as whites. ... I pray that wasn't her moment, Pray I still got time.
And then I think we realized, like any young guys, that blues are not learned in a monastery. You've got to go out there and get your heart broke and then come back and then you can sing the blues.
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.
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