A Quote by Robert Plant
I was competing for attention in a four-piece band that was phenomenal, and I was trying to attack the blues from a kind of white English viewpoint as a singer.
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It's an often-asked question, 'Why did all these spotty white English boys suddenly start playing blues in the '60s?' It was recognized as this kind of vibrant music and when I first started playing in a blues band I just wanted to bring it to a wider public who hadn't really heard it.
I was in a rock band; I was my own folk singer; I was in a death metal band for a very short time; I was in a cover band, a jazz band, a blues band. I was in a gospel choir.
When I was in the country and I was trying to play, nobody seemed to pay too much attention to me. People used to say, 'That's just that ole blues singer.'
I still think the best metal bands have a blues feel. The first Black Sabbath album is kind of a bludgeoning of blues. Deep Purple also started out as a blues band.
Luckily for me, when I was growing up in high school, I had a band, and I was a singer in the band. I'm less of a legit Broadway singer than I am a pop-rock singer.
I don't know why people call me a jazz singer, though I guess people associate me with jazz because I was raised in it, from way back. I'm not putting jazz down, but I'm not a jazz singer...I've recorded all kinds of music, but (to them) I'm either a jazz singer or a blues singer. I can't sing a blues – just a right-out blues – but I can put the blues in whatever I sing. I might sing 'Send In the Clowns' and I might stick a little bluesy part in it, or any song. What I want to do, music-wise, is all kinds of music that I like, and I like all kinds of music.
I'm not a jazz singer, blues singer or country singer. I'm a singer that can sing rhythm & blues, that can sing jazz, that can sing country. There's a big difference. In other words, I'm not a specialist.
In the beginning of my career I had to deal with the fact that since I was the only woman in the band, the singer and the face of the band, I obviously got the most of the attention of the public everywhere I went.
With the White Stripes we were trying to trick people into not realising we were playing the blues. We did not want to come off like white kids trying to play black music from 100 years ago so a great way to distract them was by dressing in red, white and black.
In my estimation, there are four kinds of people that live on this earth: average, good, great, and phenomenal. Phenomenal is like Mother Theresa. She's dead, but we still talk about her on a regular basis. That's phenomenal.
I doubt anyone has ever accused comedians of solidarity before. It's hard to think of a less collegiate world than that of unabashed professional narcissists competing for attention; even when we reluctantly band together on panel shows, we're only trying to sell solo tours.
I began writing with Mike Pinder and eventually we went on to form a new band called The M&B, which later became The Moody Blues, what I would call a progressive blues band.
So, practice, particularly after you've attained a job, any kind of job, like playing with a four piece band, that's... an opportunity to develop.
In the end, it's always about the three-piece band and the singer.
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.
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.
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