A Quote by Maya Angelou

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

Maya Angelou

Quote Topics

Blues Had Only Sad Some

Quote Author

Maya Angelou
American - Poet
April 4, 1928 - May 28, 2014

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

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.

Cornel West

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

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

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

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

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

For a while I had a blues band in L.A., but I realized I was too optimistic to play the blues. I did not have the misery in my heart that the blues required.

John C. Reilly

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.

Sinead O'Connor

Charlie Patton, who was born in 1891, recorded some of the very first blues. In 'Pony Blues' and 'Peavine Blues,' he manages to pile dense layers of rhythms one upon the other.

Tim Cahill

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.

Cyndi Lauper

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

You play a 'lowdown dirty shame slow and lonesome, my mama dead, my papa across the sea I ain't dead but I'm just supposed to be' blues. You can take that same blues, make it uptempo, a shuffle blues, that's what rock n' roll did with it. So blues ain't going nowhere. Ain't goin' nowhere.