Quotes About Blues

I grew up listening to AM radio in the '70s and hearing all of that great soul and rhythm and blues music, which definitely influenced the way I sing. But singing gospel has made me a much more humble person. There are so many people who were geniuses who only a few people knew about when they were alive.

It was so much fun to do, play the blues and then play a Monkees' set on the same night.

With my little band, I did everything they did with a big band. I made the blues jump.

I'm not a big blues fan, but I don't know anyone who doesn't dig B.B. King.

I knew BB King when he first started out.

I like the style of the deVOL kitchens - shaker style with dark greys and blues, ceramic tiles and metallics dotted around.

Some of the greatest blues music is some of the darkest music you've ever heard.

Once I was checking to hotel and a couple saw my ring with Blues on it. They said, 'You play blues. That music is so sad.' I gave them tickets to the show, and they came up afterwards and said, 'You didn't play one sad song.'

Pop culture didn't actually need an Andy Warhol to make it postmodern. Rock 'n' roll was never anything but a faked-up blues—something that the glam-era Bowie had understood perfectly. (Eno: "Some people say Bowie is all surface style and second-hand ideas, but that sounds like a definition of pop to me.")

Perowne sometimes wonders if, in his youth, he could ever have guessed that he would one day father a blues musician... But is there a lifetime's satisfaction in twelve bars of three obvious chords? Perhaps it's one of those cases of a microcosm giving you the whole world... as Daisy says, like a Jane Austen novel... There's nothing in his own life that contains this inventiveness, this style of being free.

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.

As a youngster, my parents made me aware that all that was from the African Diaspora belonged to me. So I came in with Caribbean music, African music, Latin music, gospel music and blues.

The blues is instilled in every musical cell that floats around your body.

So, rap has that quality, for youth anyway; it's a kind of blues element. It's physical, almost gymnastic. It speaks to you organically. Rap grows out of what young people really are today, not only black youth, but white - everybody.

It's marvelous when you visit Tokyo: they have these clubs, and they'll have 'Motown Night' or 'The Beatles - Totally Authentic and Live!' You know it's shrunk, but at least there's some sort of youthful figure to it. Whereas, the blues scene in Europe is more like, 'Here we go again.'

The thing is, I was more blues-oriented, more of a purist than in the pop world. That led me into a folk rock trio and to Ginger Baker before I started recording on my own.

Forget reparations - we need to rescue aspects of black culture abandoned even by black folks, whether it is the blues or home cookin' or broader forms of not just survival but triumph.

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.

Getting to play the blues has been transcendant for me. I can't say if my finest hour is yet to come, you want to make a dent in this world, well I do anyway.

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.

Lonnie was ahead of his time, but at the same time he was right in there with Albert Collins's Cool Sounds.

I remember my brother came home with a bass and played a blues solo on it. I just went insane for days afterwards learning that.

Most blues guitar players don't concentrate on singing and melodies. And forget about the bridge - the bridge doesn't exist. They go straight for the solo.

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.