Quotes About Blues

I love the sound of Elmore James, the sound early guitarists like him got just by using minimal means.

Mona Lisa must have had the highway blues; you can tell by the way she smiles.

An' here I sit so patiently Waiting to find out what price You have to pay to get out of Going through all these things twice Oh, Mama, can this really be the end To be stuck inside of Mobile With the Memphis blues again -Bob Dylan, "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again" (1966)

The gap that was created during those transatlantic voyages hundreds of years ago. That gap is the matrix of Saudade – The Longing, I think, that all Africans in the West have, that is at the root of the blues and jazz and soul and rap. If you listen you can hear it, elusive, fleeting, full of melancholy anger.

And there's blues in my bed, 'cause l'm sleepin' by myself.

Most white Americans only discovered the blues with the British invasion.

From the first album, we've had songs like 'The Jack' that are blues based. We also did it in 'Ride On,' where we went into the blues.

I grew up with music in the house. I was told I could sing as soon as I started talking. Everybody in my family sang, always lots of records, blues and jazz and soul, R&B, you know, like Mahalia Jackson, Aretha Franklin, Coltrane, that kind of thing.

We come from a generation where the music was very innovative, a lot of it coming out of blues and influenced by blues: the idea was that you would jam on things, and you'd try things out. You took a journey, and you took a left turn, and you experimented live right there in the moment.

I'm obsessed with Norah Jones and Amy Winehouse, Etta James. I'm really into blues and R&B type of stuff, '90s hip-hop; that's my jam.

The first record I heard as a kid? My dad is a great soul and blues fan, so he showed me James Brown. That was my first stuff, and I loved it.

I always liked jazz. And my people liked the old blues, race records and the doo-wop and all that.

I have been influenced by music. I grew up listening to blues, jazz and all.

All the classic jazz players all sang and a lot of 'em sang blues.

The world I live in is benefiting from things like satellite radio. Jazz and blues fests are everywhere now, and Americana is going strong on college radio. What I'm hearing is an appreciation of real music.

Elvis might have compromised his musical style a bit towards the end, but that doesn't mean that artists from the rock n' roll/folk-roots culture - of which he was not really a part - shouldn't get better as they get older, like the great jazz or blues artists.

Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck made me an Anglophile. I listened to English and Irish artists as a kid, and they were way louder, heavier, and faster than the traditional blues that I was listening to.

I'm influenced by Django Reinhardt, Stephane Grappelly, Roland Kirk, John Coltrane, B.B. King, and then by bluegrass. But when I was 16, bluegrass wasn't cool. We was rock n' rollers then: Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis.

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've always loved the blues, John Lee Hooker, Janis Joplin, Hendrix.

I liked blues from the time my mother used to take me to church. I started to listen to gospel music, so I liked that. But I had an aunt at that time, my mother's aunt who bought records by people like Lonnie Johnson, Robert Johnson, Blind Lemon Jefferson, and a few others.

I was into Jimi Hendrix, Robert Johnson, the blues.

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.

The thing with me is, about that - about rock and all that - years and years of crate-digging, listening to old music, you kind of start to connect the dots. And I was seeing the thread that was connecting everything together, which is pretty much the blues. And everything soul or funk kind of starts with that.