Blues Song Quotes

#1. When I was a small boy, 10, 11, 12, probably somewhere around there, when I first heard a blues song on the radio, it was a jolt of electricity. It grabbed me by the throat, it made me shiver. And I knew from that moment that this was for me and this would be with me for the rest of my life.

Hugh Laurie

#2. Hell, Justin and I even talking about recording a blues song sometime.

Hank Williams Jr.

#3. To write a blues song
is to regiment riots
and pluck gems from graves.

Etheridge Knight

#4. I bad a piano long before I bad a guitar, and the practice I got just playing those three chords in a basic 12-bar blues song was very important.

Mark Knopfler

#5. Ten minutes before you go onstage and you begin singing that torchy blues song, you may just be drinking a glass of water and brushing your teeth and doing some deep breathing.

Ronee Blakley

#6. Every bad situation is a blues song waiting to happen.

Amy Winehouse

#7. I like "God Give Me the Strength" very much. It's not really a blues and to call it a ballad is absurd. I don't know, its mid-tempo. Mark (St. John) actually wrote it and I think its very telling of our lives in the 60s. Its just a good song, ya know ...

Dick Taylor

#8. Just as a blues player can play 20 blues songs in a row but find a way to make each one different, ... I always want to find different ways to do something

Joe Satriani

#9. I like a very dark house, just black. I sit there and just think. Once I'm still and quiet inside, I'll begin. It's very personal; it has to be. One song may be Bach, the next blues, a song from TV, or a nursery rhyme or jazz piece.

Bobby McFerrin

#10. I think that the blues is in everything, so it's not possible to neglect it. You hear somebody go 'Ooh ooh oooh,' and that's the blues. You hear a rock n' roll song. That's the blues. Somebody playing a guitar solo? They're playing the blues.

Wynton Marsalis

#11. The Blues are the true facts of life expressed in words and song, inspiration, feeling, and understanding.

Willie Dixon

#12. All of my favorite songs can bring me to tears. Some are rock, some are blues, some are love ballads. That's why I play music - to touch other people as I have been touched.

Kelly Blatz

#13. There are only two kinds of songs; there's the blues, and there's zip-a-dee-doo-dah,

Townes Van Zandt

#14. The jazz band's chief stimulus, of course, was the rise of the negro 'blues' and their exploitation by the negro song-writer, W. C. Handy.

Bix Beiderbecke

#15. 'Tailgate Blues' is kind of a lyrical masterpiece of a country song.

Luke Bryan

#16. A jazz tune, melody, or composition is usually based on either a traditional twelve-bar, eight-bar, or four-bar blues chorus or on the thirty-two-bar chorus of the American popular song.

Albert Murray

#17. Sing it like the midnight wind, Sing it like a prayer; Sing it on to the way to hell, Them blues'll take you there. - Oren Morse, Dead Man's Song

Jonathan Maberry

#18. These is old blues / and I sing em like any woman do. / These the old blues / and I sing em, sing em, sing em. Just like any woman do. / My life ain't done yet. / Naw. My song ain't through.

Sherley Anne Williams

#19. I can still write blues songs because I remember everything.

Eddie Vedder

#20. People were saying that Southern folk song was dead, that the land that had produced American jazz, the blues, the spirituals, the mountain ballads and the work songs had gone sterile.

Alan Lomax

#21. I met a girl who sang the blues
and I asked her for some happy news,
but she just smiled and turned away.
And the three men I admire most,
The Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost,
They caught the last train to the coast
The day the music died.

Don McLean

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

Henry Rollins

#23. Blues are the songs of despair,

Mahalia Jackson

#24. Now listen for your song. Everybody's got a song. When I used to chase the Trane - John Coltrane that is - he used to tell me, 'If I know a man's sound, I know the man.' Do you hear the melody playing in your mind? Does it move you, nudge you off your seat?

David Mutti Clark

#25. You could play the blues like it was a lonesome thing - it was a feeling. The blues is nothing but a story ... The verses which are sung in the blues is a true story, what people are doing ... what they all went through. It's not just a song, see?

David Edwards

#26. 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.'

Buddy Guy

#27. I love songs, and I love songwriting, and there's a standard of songwriting within Chicago blues in particular. I don't like the sad blues, necessarily; the Chicago blues is what I like, which is the kind of blues you can dance to.

Sinead O'Connor

#28. The British ballads became a new kind of form in their hand. And out of them came the blues, a new kind of song of commentary and satire, a song form which, after all, has become the main musical form of the whole human species.

Alan Lomax

#29. They say that no one's gonna play this on the radio. They said the melancholy blues were dead and gone. But only songs like these played in minor keys, keep those memories holding on.

Billy Joel

#30. He's written some great songs. I thought that 'Blues Man' was a perfect song for me to do as a tribute.

Alan Jackson

#31. George Jones was a big, huge name in our household. George Jones-he is considered country, but in every genre he is known. Everybody knows George Jones. But George has such a unique voice. And he made such timeless songs, like "Color of the Blues", just real hard-core country stuff.

Patty Loveless

#32. Well first of all, I'm a singer. I sing since I talk. So the great ballad singers, the people that sang with so much feeling, jazz, blues, all those singers, they were songs that I listened to, records that my mom played for me, and then later I bought.

Gloria Estefan

#33. John will never forsake the weak and the helpless, nor fail to bring hope to the hopeless. That is what they believe, and so they do not worry. They go on and laugh and sing. Things are bound to come out right tomorrow. That is the secret of Negro song and laughter.

Zora Neale Hurston

#34. When the sweet talkin's done, a man is a two face, a worrisome thing who'll leave you to sing the blues in the night.

Johnny Mercer

#35. I listen to, like, funky Chicago blues. I love blues, but I love the funky, happy blues. There's a song about pretty much everything, including kidney stones, believe it or not. So there's something there for whatever you happen to be suffering, you know?

Sinead O'Connor

#36. If you only get one song, it has to be Bullfrog Blues

David Bromberg

#37. I have to have music playing constantly. It creates the tone and mood for anything you are doing. I specifically love rock, and Jimi Hendrix is one of my favorite artists. My favorite song is 'Red House,' because it's heavy on the blues.

Marisa Miller

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

Tom Franklin

#39. The old jazz singers or old blues singers, you always just saw them kind of sitting down and singing. They weren't worried as much about their voice sounding perfect. They would make the song kind of fit their voice.

Lucinda Williams

#40. When I was in high school, there were these British blues-rock-type bands with really good guitar players that would jam on one song for half an hour. And as much as I was amazed by some of those guitar players, seeing them prompted me to make a note that that's not something I could do.

David Byrne

#41. The world has made everything else and still it can't make peace. And the reason it can't make peace is because of the evil, ignorance and stupidity. I have songs that explain these facts. And that's the blues.

Willie Dixon