Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The story of American pop music is the story of failure. The blues, country music, it's not the story of success. People don't win; they lose.
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.
Yeah; I'm a much better blues player than anybody knows, but being in the kind of group I'm in, we were always trying to make popular records.
In 1940 I came across a record by Jimmy Yancey. I can't say how important that record is. From then on, all I wanted to do was play the blues.
I was considered as a jazz man rather than as a blues player. There were no blues players-you played one sort of jazz of another sort of jazz.
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.
When I picked up my guitar, I spent the first day learning the chord E, the second day A, then B7, and all of a sudden, I could play the blues.
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.
We played, jazz, blues, dixie, and it all came from the church. When I went to church, I would see the sisters and brothers doing the same beat.
Having pop sensibilities from my past and also being a lead blues and sort of rock guitarist allowed me to bring that kind of beachy rock groove.
I think that as you get older, you mellow out a lot more. Having been through the ups and downs in life, I feel more qualified to play the blues.
I will sing happy songs, and I do sing happy songs, but the stuff that's going to move me and going to make me close my eyes is always the blues.
One performer whose band played my music better than I could myself was Art Farmer. He recorded 'Sing Me Softly of the Blues' and 'Ad Infinitum'.
I started to like blues, I guess, when I was about 6 or 7 years old. There was something about it, because nobody else played that kind of music.
I didn't want to go out and change anything. I just wanted to make the music that was part of my background, which was rock and blues and hip-hop.
The next thing I knew, I was out of the service and making movies again. My first picture was called, GI Blues. I thought I was still in the army.
As you grow older, you learn to appreciate all the artistry. I'm actually on my way back to the blues, you know, that my mothers and fathers liked.
I think 'Adiye/Yadike' is unique and fresh and something new for Indian films. It brings together the blues and gospel feel with Tamil folk lyrics.
Maybe someday you can accuse somebody of being a poseur by selling out and playing blues music, but that's just not going to happen in my lifetime.
What makes my approach special is that I do different things. I do jazz, blues, country music and so forth. I do them all, like a good utility man.
I guess music, particularly the blues, is the only form of schizophrenia that has organised itself into being both legal and beneficial to society.
The reflection of the world is blues, that's where that part of the music is at. Then you got this other kind of music that's tryin' to come around.
'Hairdresser Blues' was written when I was deep in a ten-year depression that I escaped shortly after recording that album. I don't like that album.
The blues is the foundation, and it's got to carry the top. The other part of the scene, the rock 'n' roll and the jazz, are the walls of the blues.
To me, country music is like the blues, but it's something very hip and - I don't want to say commercial - but it's very worldly and good listening.
The blues is so expressive - nostalgic but not sentimental, mournful but not pathetic, so humble and close to the earth. It's a nuance-filled thing.
Years and years ago, I sang at a blues bar with a band behind me. It was with my friend, my guitar teacher at the time. I took some sporadic lessons.
Wherever I am in the world, I never get Sunday night blues. I suppose it's because I've never worked at any one thing long enough to start hating it.
My father and mother listened to oldies, from be-bop and swing music to - I hate to admit it, but - Barry Manilow, Fleetwood Mac and the Moody Blues.
My mum's family would all get together, with guitars, harmonica, mandolins and upright bass and play old blues and folk songs. That was normal to me.
I've always been a fan of Buddy Guy as a guitarist, as well as Stevie Ray Vaughan and those blues guys. I'd say those are pretty big influences on me.
I didn't get into music to become a blues musician, or a country musician. I'm a singer-songwriter. In my book that means I get to do whatever I want.
Hip-hop, which is my generation's blues, is important to the characters that I write about. They use hip-hop to understand the world through language.
My favorite moment of the whole thing was when John Belushi suggested that I get a hold of all the blues records I could so I could research the music.
If they played more blues, people would just get it - they try to hold it back but just about can't hold it back now because the blues is really going.
I've always found a cure for the blues is wandering into something unknown, and resting there, before coming back to whatever weight you were carrying.
We didn't go for music that sounded like blues, or jazz, or rock, or Led Zeppelin, or Rolling Stones. We didn't want to be like any of the other bands.
It was just like Howlin' Wolf. Once you arrive at the point that you understand it, the emotional factor is darker than some of the saddest blues stuff.
I think once I had lived life, once I had failed enough in this lifetime and got back up a thousand times from failing, I really connected to the blues.
I've never been an all-black girl. I like pinks and blues and greens. If you come over to my closet, you'll be able to find a rainbow of things to wear.
I don't want the viewer to be able to peel away the layers of my painting like the layers of an onion and find that all the blues are on the same level.
I got put out of my church choir because my pastor said, 'We can't have baby sister singing the blues and coming in here and singing on Sunday morning.'
I'm sure there are a few things in my CD collection that might surprise people. I like classical music, the blues, and I'm a big fan of alternative rock.
I moved from Chicago to New York in 1984 for 'Biloxi Blues.' In 1989, my wife and our then-baby daughter moved to Los Angeles to try to get in television.
I listened to classical guitar and Spanish guitar, as well as jazz guitar players, rock and roll and blues. All of it. I did the same thing with my voice.
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.
I'm John Lee Hooker in the sense that he was a blues man and he played blues his whole life. I'm a rock guy and I'm going to play rock music my whole life.
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.'
The British feel of blues has been hard, rather than emotional. Far too much emphasis on 12 bar, too little attention to words, far too little originality.
It was a time after 'Lady Sings the Blues' and 'Mahogany' and all those romantic movies: I became this romantic figure on the street in a very special way.