Quotes About Blues

I met Sonny after (Blind Boy) Fuller died, and me and Sonny played in the streets like everybody else.

Blues is life, you know? An appreciation for the depth of life and the fact that hard times strengthen you and make you ready - blues, a lot of times, is about the loss of love.

I listened to all those blues records. They were great - Clapton, John Mayall. Then eventually I heard Genesis with Peter Gabriel, and I didn't really understand the difference then, but something struck me about the inversions and the diminished chords... they weren't as bluesy, and I loved it. I found out, that was very baroque-influenced.

See, we started out with a foundation of blues. But then we added people like Miles Davis and John Coltrane to the mix and gave rock n' roll a much more complex structure. It made it possible to play more than three chords.

I liked the 12-bar blues because everybody could play it, but they could also play it their own way, and they could express their own emotions using that as a structure.

It was the early days of Rock 'n' Roll in this country. We were all struggling to learn music, it might be Country, Jazz, Classical, Blues or even Rock 'n' Roll.

For a black male, the sound of the blues is pre-Civil Rights. It's oppression.

Basically we're a blues oriented rock 'n' roll band... easy to listen to.

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.

The blues. It runs through all American music. Somebody bending the note. The other is the two-beat groove. It's in New Orleans music, it's in jazz, it's in country music, it's in gospel.

There's a difference between the blues of the New Orleans guys and anyone else and the difference is in a chord, but I can't figure the name of it. It's a different chord, and they all make it.

High Water Everywhere" by Charlie Patton. If you have a hard time making out the lyrics, you're not alone—even Son House (who, along with Howlin' Wolf, was influenced by Patton)

Blind Pig Blues

Back Water Blues" by Bessie Smith. This is the one most closely associated with the 1927 flood,

Back water done rose at Sumner," sings Patton, "drove poor Charlie down, down the line.

Down Hearted Blues," by Bessie Smith. This is the song Ingersoll is singing to the baby

The "back waters" she sings of are old riverbeds that were deliberately flooded to take pressure off the main channel's levees. "Back water blues done call me to pack my things and go,

Mississippi Heavy Water Blues

He sings, "I'm in Mississippi, with mud all in my shoes / My girl in Louisiana with those high water blues." Later he says, "Listen here, you men, / one more thing I'd like to say / Ain't no womens out here, for they all got washed away.

Hey. Please. This is not the Midwest. All right? Michigan is the Midwest, God knows why. This is the Plains: a state of mind, right, some spiritual affliction, like the Blues.

BILL: Anyway, if you want me to explain the creepy character of the Midwest, you're asking the wrong— BARBARA: Hey. Please. This is not the Midwest. All right? Michigan is the Midwest, God knows why. This is the Plains: a state of mind, right, some spiritual affliction, like the Blues.

As ocean blushes the blues it can't absorb, reflecting back a day.

ocean's snaking blues beyond the meadow

The problem is that a lot of the blues stations are late on Saturday night, and like a lot of people, I ain't no vampire!