Blues Music Quotes

I never thought I was playing black music. I was just playing music, the stuff I liked. I sang blues at parties and things when I was a kid. — Mose Allison

Logically, when you talkin' about folk music and blues, you find out it's music of just plain people. — Brownie McGhee

Country music originates with the colloquial, rural aspects of white America. It's really, truly, rural white America's blues. — Dwight Yoakam

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. — Jack White

The Blues? It's the mother of American music. That's what is is - the source. — B.B. King

I just hope I'm remembered as a good blues musician. — Johnny Winter

There's only two kinds of music: the blues and zippety doo-dah. — Townes Van Zandt

The blues has been the foundation of all other American music since the beginning. — Willie Dixon

And here's to the blues, the real blues - where there's a hint of hope in every cry of desperation. — David Mutti Clark

That's the kind of musical freedom I like: jazz, rock, blues, anything. You adopt different attitudes when you play different music. — Alvin Lee

The blues was bleeding the same blood as me. — B.B. King

My idea of heaven is a place where the Tyne meets the Delta, where folk music meets the blues. — Mark Knopfler

I listen to blues music a lot and that's a good person feeling bad and celebrating that pain by releasing it in that kind of joyous fashion. — Henry Rollins

As far as I'm concerned, blues and jazz are the great American contributions to music. — Edgar Winter

I'm crazy about James Brown. I'm crazy about soul music. And then the blues. Rhythm and blues. — Bill Nighy

All music is the blues. All of it. — George Carlin

The music plays ... and your sense of reality is heightened to a dream. — David Mutti Clark

Simple music is the hardest music to play and blues is simple music. — Albert Collins

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

For me, jazz, R&B, jump swing, Chicago blues, country blues, early hillbilly music, and honky tonk all stem from the same source — Duke Robillard

Without the blues, modern music would be nothing like it is now - not remotely. — Henry Rollins

I think of rock 'n' roll as a combination of country blues and swing band music, not Chicago blues, and modern pop. — Bob Dylan

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 — Nick Hornby

The music that I listen to is very minimalistic. I listen to a lot of old blues that is just guitar and vocals. — Lykke Li

Jazz is like blues with a shot of heroin! — Miles Davis

The music echoes in the emptiness. It reminds us where we came from and where we're bound. — David Mutti Clark

Blues and soul and jazz music has so much pain, so much beauty of raw emotion and passion. — Christina Aguilera

No yoga exercise, no meditation in a chapel filled with music will rid you of your blues better than the humble task of making your own bread. — Mary Francis Kennedy Fisher

I love most melodic music - classical, reggae, big band, jazz, blues, country, pop, swing, folk. — John Lescroart

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

Blues musicians don't retire. They drop. — Buddy Guy

There would be no rock and roll or rhythm and blues without Leo Fenders' contribution ... the tone is everything — Bonnie Raitt

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. — Ray Charles

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

I'm an Australian, and when I grew up much of my influences were American - blues music and country music, all that sort of thing. — Nick Cave

For me there is something primitively soothing about this music, and it went straight to my nervous system, making me feel ten feet tall. — Eric Clapton

If you don't live it, you don't believe it. — Paul Harvey

I guess I would call my music 'blues punk.' There's a lot of influences. — Benjamin Booker

Irving Berlin was the greatest songwriter of all time. I was in awe of him. But his music wasn't my music. My music was the blues. — Jerry Leiber

If you don't know the blues ... there's no point in picking up the guitar and playing rock and roll or any other form of popular music. — Keith Richards

Everybody started calling my music rock and roll, but it wasn't anything but the same rhythm and blues I'd been playing down in New Orleans. — Fats Domino

Popular music has always been rooted in the blues, whether it's Adele or Led Zeppelin or Sam Cooke. It's just the beat that changes. — L.A. Reid

I've said that playing the blues is like having to be black twice. Stevie Ray Vaughan missed on both counts, but I never noticed. — B.B. King

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. — Kid Rock

I was into playing American music, especially the blues. — Mark Knopfler

We're blues people. And blues never lets tragedy have the last word. — Wynton Marsalis

I think blues music is music of the soul. Of course, there are other forms. You could call some classical music blues music in that way. — PJ Harvey

When Johnson started singing, he seemed like a guy who could have sprung from the head of Zeus in full armor. — Bob Dylan

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

As far as we were concerned, we were just a blues band that had decided to write some scary music. — Ozzy Osbourne

Musically, he was like an old man in a boy's skin. — Eric Clapton

If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:
THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC — Kurt Vonnegut

The blues ain't nothing but a good man feelin' bad. — Leon Redbone

Rhythm and blues used to be called race music ... This music was going on for years, but nobody paid any attention to it. — Ray Charles

The blues are just a heightened sense of awareness of life's ups and downs, and things that a guy sees after a couple hits of Jack Daniels. — Steven Tyler

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. — Jimi Hendrix

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

What about a blues in W, in the key of W. — Rahsaan Roland Kirk

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

I sing God's music because it makes me feel free. It gives me hope. With the blues, when you finish, you still have the blues. — Mahalia Jackson

I believe that blues and jazz are the two uniquely American contributions into music. — Edgar Winter

We start our lives with blues ... with music. It's our first language. It's the rhythm of the womb. It's your mama's heartbeat inside your head. — David Mutti Clark

I use rock and jazz and blues rhythms because I love that music. I hope my poetry has a relationship with good-time rock'n roll. — Adrian Mitchell

In blues music, there's a lot of borrowing, so it's often difficult to identify the originator of a song. — Henry Rollins

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'. — Carla Bley

I guess music, particularly the blues, is the only form of schizophrenia that has organised itself into being both legal and beneficial to society. — Alexis Korner

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. — B.B. King

I've never met God, but I've heard the blues. — David Mutti Clark

I always loved Sam Cooke, because he seemed very versatile. He sang gospel, soul, blues, pop music. — Aaron Neville

My father's rich, my momma's good looking. Right? And I can play the Blues. I've never suffered and don't intend to suffer. — Miles Davis

So, maybe you don't see blues so much in Styx's music but it is definitely part of Tommy's early music. — James Young

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

When the slaves left Africa, they left us this music. They left us blues. — Youssou N'Dour

I'm done with industrial. Seriously, my iPod collection at home has no industrial music on it; it's strictly jazz, blues and country. — Al Jourgensen

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. — Howlin' Wolf

Pop music is aspirin and the blues are vitamins. — Peter Tork

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. — Justin Townes Earle

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

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. — Etta James

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

I like blues but it is music I am too ignorant to understand. — Barry Gibb

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. — John Mayer

The Righteous Brothers were purely rhythm and blues, black music. — Bill Medley

Blues had the pulse beat of the people who keep on going. — Langston Hughes

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

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. — Alberta Hunter

On my John Coltrane. In a sentimental mood. — Brandi L. Bates

The blues echoes right through into soul, R&B and hip hop. It's part of the make-up of modern music. You can't turn your back on the blues. — Ronnie Wood

It is secular spiritual music, the gospel blues. It's music from the heart instead of the head. — Charlie Musselwhite

If you're going to get into music, you've got to learn the 12-bar blues. — Johnny Ramistella

Blues is to jazz what yeast is to bread
without it, it's flat. — Carmen McRae

All riddles are blues, / And all blues are sad, / And I'm only mentioning / Some blues I've had. — Maya Angelou

I've been listening to quite a lot of classical music like Erik Satie, and quite a lot of blues. — Elizabeth Jagger

If blues culture had developed under the conditions of oppressive, forced labor, hip-hop culture would arise from the conditions of no work — Jeff Chain

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. — Ato Essandoh

The blues is celebration, because when you take sorrow and turn it into music, you transform it. — Odetta

Gospel music is never pessimistic, it's never 'oh my god, its all going down the tubes', like the blues often is. — Brian Eno

You might say that the universe plays the blues. — David Byrne

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

The blues will always be because the blues are the roots of all American music. — Willie Dixon