A Quote by Louis Jordan

With my little band, I did everything they did with a big band. I made the blues jump. — © Louis Jordan
With my little band, I did everything they did with a big band. I made the blues jump.
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.
The Big Band Era is my era. People say, 'Where did you get your style from?' I did the Big Band Era on guitar. That's the best way I could explain it.
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 have a personal Twitter for band purposes, but I don't use social media a lot. I fall in a weird age gap. I was on band message boards when I was 16, but I was on the early curve of Facebook. I did it for work when I worked in media, and I did it for the band, but I can't relate to the idea that you live your life online.
I'm seeing myself as an outsider a little bit - definitely when I started the band. I knew what band's name meant and nobody else really did, so I'd be on stage every night and say, "Hello, we're Art Brut" - basically saying that we were rejects. But I mean, I didn't really sing, it did feel a bit like we were outsiders. It was a bit tongue-in-cheek when I first named the band that, but then we slowly turned into that - like a self-fulfilling prophecy.
In the late '70s, I had a band - the David Johansen band, for lack of a better name - and I started collecting, not records, but tapes from people I knew who had jump-blues records.
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.
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.
You don't accidentally turn into a big band. Not even Nirvana accidentally turned into a big band. They toured - they wanted to become a big band. They didn't necessarily want to become that big of a band, but they still wanted to make a really good record and wanted to come out and tour.
Their eagerness for the big-band music and their ability to grasp the essence of it made me realize that today's generation has not been properly exposed to the big-band sound.
I never thought of us as a punk band, a metal band, or a new wave band. Just as a band band.
When I did my rock band, I pined for a more soulful sound. I wanted music that was very melodic and blues-based.
What did we play in the Harry Dean Stanton Band? It was old blues and country - all covers. I never wrote anything.
The Smashing Pumpkins was never meant to be a small band. It was going to either be a big band, or a no band.
I did exactly what I wanted to do. It was always my intention to put a band together and be a band and not be about the solo pop guy. That was never me. All of the musicians that made me do what I wanted to do were bands. I didn't see it any other way.
When I was in my former band Downhere, I did everything I could not to remind people of Freddie Mercury, but it became almost hilarious how many people compared me to him to the point where it felt like it was working against the band when we tested singles at radio.
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