Top 1200 Blues Music Quotes & Sayings - Page 4

Singing about your sadness unburdens your soul. But the blues hollers shouted about more than being sad. They were also delivering messages in musical code. If the master was coming, you might sing a hidden warning to the other field hands . . . The blues could warn you what was coming. I could see the blues was about survival.

I forget what the official name of it was, but they did an all-day of roots music - every kind of music you can imagine from around the country - New Orleans Jazz to Indian flute players, R&B, you name it. I met and became good friends with (blues guitar player) Joe Louis Walker. He was on the show.

I would sing the blues if I had the blues.

You know, the BBC had not been particularly generous in its deliverance of blues and esoteric kinds of music.

You don't have to play a whole lot of guitar to be a good blues player. Some people plays too much guitar. Stack it on top of each other the way it don't - you're working too fast. Blues not supposed to be played fast. Blues supposed to be played slow. You could kill a man with just one chord.

It is from the blues that all that may be called American music derives its most distinctive character.

I played in Velvet Revolver, which is a raw, bombastic blues band with a punk rock edge to it. It's like everything is based around the blues, no matter what the groove is.

I love blues. My grandfather did blues.

It's just that romance, with its dips and turns and glooms and highs, its swoops and swoons and blues, is a natural metaphor for music itself

I've purposely made my music to be challenging and different. There's some electronics, R&B, blues, Motown, country, jazz and lots of soul.

The delta blues is a low-down, dirty shame blues. It's a sad, big wide sound, something to make you think about people who are dead or the women who left you.

The musicians that didn't know music could play the best blues. I know that I don't want no musicians who know all about music playin' for me.

The fact that we elected Obama was a sign that the black struggle inherent in the blues and so much of the music I have loved can triumph.

Mostly, whenever I'm booked to do instruction, I just play a little bit and get people to ask questions. We'll play some music for 'em, 'til somebody hollers out, 'Play 'Milk Cow Blues' or 'Play 'San Antonio Rose.' We play requests and demonstrate our music.

When I did my rock band, I pined for a more soulful sound. I wanted music that was very melodic and blues-based.

In the United States, many people said you can't have folk music in the United States because you don't have any peasant class. But the funny thing was, there were literally thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people who loved old time fiddling, ballads, banjo tunes, blues played on the guitar, spirituals and gospel hymns. These songs and music didn't fit into any neat category of art music nor popular music nor jazz. So gradually they said well let's call it folk music.

Mick Jagger has been an idol of mine since I was 10 years old. Through his music, he has taught me so much about rock n' roll, but also about the blues and about the experience of live music, going to several Rolling Stones shows, growing up.

It seems all worlds of music - rock, blues, R&B, soul, hip-hop and others - are able to point to impromptu get-togethers as proud moments in their timelines, encounters that were recorded and created music of lasting impression. In the jazz tradition, there are a few, but none that has been revered for as long as Jazz at Massey Hall.

Our repertoire consisted of rhythm and blues, sort of country rhythm and blues, Sonny Terry things.

Country music, like rock or blues, can move over into a lot of different areas.

The white music was melodic and pretty, and you had beautiful women's voices like Gogi Grant and even the Andrews Sisters. Then I went directly to rhythm and blues, which had beautiful voices but not much melody in particular and pretty much the same chord pattern. I loved it, I was entrenched in it, but then folk music came in the middle of that for me, and made its own path. And it was part of the rebellion against bubblegum music, or music that is pretty but doesn't say anything.

The blues is something separate from what I do. They connect at certain spots, but blues is different. I wouldn't put it in with what my career has been. That would be a whole separate wing.

What isn’t on my iPod playlist? I have very eclectic tastes. Jazz. Classic Rock. Hip Hop. Ska. Soul. Electronica.World Music. Funk. Blues. Chamber Music. Reggaeton. Gospel. And a whole lot of Prince. (I am a Minnesota gal through and through.)

I find Indian music very funky. I mean it's very soulful, with their own kind of blues. But it's the only other school on the planet that develops improvisation to the high degree that you find in jazz music. So we have a lot of common ground.

It started so early, it all runs together. But what made a huge impact on me was when I went to Europe at 15 or 16 years old. All I knew before that was music on the radio and TV. When I went over there I realized there are all different levels of music. There are people who do blues, jazz, classical, working in film, TV and all kinds of places. You might not see them on MTV but there are lots of needs and uses and opportunities for all kinds of music.

Blues is one of the most important art forms. It's an amazing music, and we don't want to lose it.

We tried to make music that had a very diverse collection of genres - jazz, pop, Latin, even the blues. We tried to have a gumbo soup of expressions. We wanted to create music that would have people dive into a pool of artistic beauty and feel good. And I think we have been really blessed.

Truth of the matter is, jazz is American music. And that doesn't mean bebop. Jazz is really about improvising. All the music that's been created in America has been pretty much improvised... Whether it's hillbilly or rock n' roll for blues, it's basically jazz music... It's basically about another way of hearing what comes out of America.

Playing live is much more natural for me. The instant reaction and the feedback from the audience is great for me. I really relish it. And if you play blues-based music, it's not really academic music or recital music. It really needs a bit of atmosphere and a bit of interplay and a bit of roughness, and you really get that with an audience.

I tend to play a lot of blues things at home, because most blues things are basically within a 12-bar pattern.

Blues is a natural fact, is something that a fellow lives. If you don't live it you don't have it. Young people have forgotten to cry the blues. Now they talk and get lawyers and things.

Isn't my music the last of the real rhythm and blues? Isn't it great? It's because of my musicians, we were weaned on Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, all the founding fathers, the gods of thunder, who invented the foundation and the pulse of the greatest music in the world!

Everything comes from one thing, everything comes from the Spirit. Jazz would not exist had it not been for gospel music, the blues would not exist had it not been for spiritual blues, which goes back to slave songs our fore fathers were singing while they were out in the field. So it's all one continuous growth from one group of people. Of course jazz now is played by various cultures and colors around the world. But the stimulus is One Voice.

Actually, I didn't listen to country music very much in Oklahoma. I listened to blues and rock n' roll.

I loved music from the age of eight. Jazz and blues. But also Little Richard and Elvis Presley.

I wouldn't think a blues album would be that commercially successful, but I don't really care. I'd do it for the love of blues, not for the money. I've got plenty of money.

We have that storytelling history in country and bluegrass and old time and folk music, blues - all those things that combine to make up the genre. It was probably storytelling before it was songwriting, as far as country music is concerned. It's fun to be a part of that and tip the hat to that. You know, and keep that tradition alive.

While the House of Blues slogan has been 'In blues we trust,' its stages are usually filled with more reliable moneymakers - Neil Diamond and A Tribe Called Quest among them.

So from Jazz, Blues, R&B, Soul, Classical and Country music, Hip Hop has introduced us to a little bit of everything.

The blues is a hopeful music. It helps you process something rather than avoid it. It's like mourning, in essence.

I don't play anything but the blues, but now I could never make no money on nothin' but the blues. That's why I wasn't interested in nothin' else.

The blues is always there. It's going to be hard out here, but it's all right. It's all right, and that's what the blues teaches you. You got to roll with the punches and find your equilibrium.

Depending on what you allow, you can still get the blues, man. I'm still trying to figure out where the blues really lies, where the street is.

Blues, rock, and soul are part of the music I make, but there are Indian influences, too.

Working in bars back then, in the '50s, to get a job you had to play all kinds of music. There'd be customers come in and yell jazz tunes at you and yell rock 'n' roll tunes at you and polkas and rhythm and blues and country music.

Jimi Hendrix came from the blues, like me. We understood each other right away because of that. He was a great blues guitarist.

I love country music, blues, and punk, and one day I might make those kinds of records.

New Orleans is just so full of culture in the music content - blues, folk. I was introduced to a lot of things. My mother didn't keep me away from other music. She only kept me away from rap. The closest I got to rap was D'Angelo.

I grew up listening to blues and rock 'n' roll and other music, but, legitimately, the Stones is one of my favorite bands in the world.

The music pot is broad. It's just unfortunate that the record companies cry the blues as frequently as they do.

I grew up listening to blues and rock n' roll and other music, but, legitimately, the Stones is one of my favorite bands in the world.

I grew up in Memphis, Tennessee. Big time blues and music city. It's always been in my bloodline.

The blues comes right back to a person's feelings, to his daily activities in life. But rich people don't know nothing about the blues, please believe me.

In my teenage years I was as addicted to great pop as I was to free jazz, electronic music, and hardcore blues.

Singers come and go; the music business waxes and wanes. The blues are popular and unpopular, often at the same time.

I've grown up on gospel and blues music, and now it's a huge part of who I am.

The blues are like the fugue in 18th century. It's probably the music that belongs most to our time.

My greatest influence has been the blues. And that's a literary influence, because I think the blues is the best literature that we as black Americans have.

The music that I first fell in love with was American music, really. Nothing against British acts - I love them and will forever - but on the whole, it was the art of American storytelling in the kind of folk and blues lyrics that, if you scratch a little bit, there's a heartbreaking story there.

When you break it all down, my punk rock is my dad's blues. It's music from the underground, and it's real, and it's written for the downtrodden in uncertain times.