Quotes About Black Musicians

#1. Working with Benny was important for me and for black musicians in general.

Lionel Hampton

#2. The Blues scene now is international. In the '50s it was purely something that you would hear in black clubs, played by black musicians, especially in America. But from the '60s onwards it changed.

Mick Taylor

#3. Bobby Darin was one of the first to take black musicians on the road with his band, and there were places that didn't want him to play, and he stood up to it.

Kevin Spacey

#4. What 'jazz' means to me is the worst kind of working conditions, the worst in cultural prejudice. The term 'jazz' has come to mean the abuse and exploitation of black musicians.

Maxim Gorky

#5. I suppose it was later on that I realized that there was some reaction among the musicians themselves, some of whom resented the success of cool jazz in California, and that broke down into the white guys against the hard-blowing black guys in New York.

Ashley Kahn

#6. I spend a lot of time in L.A., and when it rains there you get the entire rainfall for the year in two days, raindrops the size of mangoes. And in Barcelona, the Mediterranean storms come up from the sea, thunder and lightning; it's like the end of the world.

Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#7. I'm a romantic, and we romantics are more sensitive to the way people feel. We love more, and we hurt more. When we're hurt, we hurt for a long time.

Freddy Fender

#8. But between sets I'd sneak over to the black places to hear blues musicians. It got to the point where I was making my living at white clubs and having my fun at the other places.

Stevie Ray Vaughan

#9. I think I might die if I don't kiss you right now. A real-life kiss.

Mari Mancusi

#10. The black hole in democracy is integrity. The great unspoken is integrity. When integrity is not first and foremost, it's quite palpable but not visible. It's always there. Jazz highlights it because musicians and jazz always represented a high level of integrity.

Wynton Marsalis

#11. Watch MTV and you can see what the music scene is like in England. The Spice Girls? Not a lot of creativity in the commercial area. There are still great musicians in England, but not a lot being heard that much.

Jimmy Carl Black

#12. The great thing about being the son of Maya Angelou is that I had the good fortune to grow up around some of the greatest black artists, dancers, singers, musicians, and actors of our time.

Guy Johnson

#13. Well I'm not a novelist. I've only written one book and that is a memoir.

Carly Fiorina

#14. I felt black. I was as far as I was concerned. And I wanted to be black for lots of reasons. They were better musicians, they were better athletes, they were not uptight about sex, and they knew how to enjoy life better than most people.

Jerry Leiber

#15. I began to practise day and night, and the more I did, the more I was overwhelmed by the tremendous achievement of that great family of black American musicians I was beginning to know closely.

Gilad Atzmon

#16. When did you trust someone to hold a truth as carefully as you did?

Martine Murray

#17. Instead of always asking yourself how to clear up your mental fog, learn to ask: "Can confusion know anything about clarity?"

Guy Finley

#18. At the same time, I was listening to black music, and I began to think that the best musicians were receiving the worst treatment. The people who were doing the greatest work were despised as lower class, with no dignity accorded to what they did.

Henry Flynt

#19. It may be enough, however, to have it said that we survive in exact relationship to the dedication of our poets (include preachers, musicians, and blues singers).

Maya Angelou

#20. You are a cruel and lying species. You have not kept faith with evolution; you have not kept faith with yourselves; you have not kept faith with your own prophets and seers.

Eden Phillpotts

#21. There were so many groups that I had in college, but I was always the solo singer. But what made it so unusual back in the day was that I was a black girl playing with all these white musicians, and I was also singing rock music on top of it.

Natalie Cole

#22. I love the holiday season, almost as much as I love touching myself in front of orphans.

Zach Braff

#23. It wont be possible to be famouse without courage.

Bozorgmehr

#24. We, as Unitarians, may feel that the world is coming our way.

William Howard Taft

#25. The best musicians in the world were raised on the same kind of music I was raised on and that is black, soulful, authoritative, ultra-tight, ferocious, uppity, defiant music that from the Howlin' Wolf, the Muddy Waters, the Lightnin' Hopkins, the Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, and Little Richard.

Ted Nugent

#26. Life made easier for others is a life so worthwhile living

Margo Vader

#27. Kansas City, I would say, did more for jazz music, black music, than any other influence at all. Almost all their joints that they had there, they used black bands. Most musicians who amounted to anything, they would flock to Kansas City because that's the place where jobs were plentiful.

Jesse Stone

#28. I loved the atmosphere of the dance studios - the wooden floors, the big mirrors, everyone dressed in pink or black tights, the musicians accompanying us - and the feeling of ritual the classes had.

Suzanne Vega

#29. Film making is an expensive, as well as a serious business. We should be able to entertain our audiences, who are fully aware of what they want. Every filmmaker has a different point of view and presents facets of society.

Rohit Shetty

#30. You should never rely on interviews with musicians as being factual. Most of them are mangled and even have made up stuff in them, that is to say, made up stuff by the writer or editor.

Frank Black