Top 100 Quotes About Blues Music
#1. Everything comes out in blues music: joy, pain, struggle. Blues is affirmation with absolute elegance. It's about a man and a woman. So the pain and the struggle in the blues is that universal pain that comes from having your heart broken. Most blues songs are not about social statements.
Wynton Marsalis
#2. We had a missionary zeal about blues music, and I felt, particularly, that Mickie Most was attempting to homogenize, sweeten, and make it accessible for the mass market. Which is understandable if you're the producer, but aggravating if you're the artist.
Alan Price
#3. Blues music is becoming more and more popular than it ever was. I'm always meeting people on the road that are really young, and are guitar players. male and female.
Mick Taylor
#4. What I consider to be the barometer for what is a rock artist and what is not, is somebody who has a certain element of blues, even a hint of soul or blues music, derivative of African-American blues, folk, spiritual, or gospel.
Ian Astbury
#5. 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
#6. 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
#7. 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
#8. I've grown up on gospel and blues music, and now it's a huge part of who I am.
Benjamin Booker
#9. When I learned to play music, I was listening to blues music. And all the blues music I liked was super simple and stripped down. And then all the hip hop I liked was super simple and stripped down and we always heard that connection.
Dan Auerbach
#10. Some of the greatest blues music is some of the darkest music you've ever heard.
Bruce Springsteen
#11. 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
#12. In blues music, there's a lot of borrowing, so it's often difficult to identify the originator of a song.
Henry Rollins
#13. Simple music is the hardest music to play and blues is simple music.
Albert Collins
#14. The blues are like the fugue in 18th century. It's probably the music that belongs most to our time.
Michael Tippett
#15. The idea of a hypnotic riff as the prime mover of a piece of music has been around for a long time, whether you're talking about the Delta blues or music from Middle Eastern and African cultures.
Jimmy Page
#16. I'm singing the way that I love to sing, which is like old soul, like old Al Green. I grew up about an hour from Memphis. So all that music that I grew up with - the Stax music and early rhythm 'n' blues - I'm doing that. I'm actually getting out from behind my guitar and I'm singing.
Sheryl Crow
#17. I'm John Lee Hooker in the sense that he was a blues man and he played blues his whole life. I'm a rock guy and I'm going to play rock music my whole life.
Sammy Hagar
#18. What music I listen to day to day changes very, very much. I can go from bluegrass to heavy metal, to blues, to classical and big band and then go to pop and rap.
Casey James
#19. I am a lover of all sorts of different music. I love blues and every piece of music that I have listened to has become an influence.
David Gilmour
#20. My father's nephew was the blues musician, Lowell Fulson. Every time he came around, he had a pretty car, a beautiful woman and a slick sharkskin suit. Believe it or not, that's how I decided I wanted to get into music.
Charlie Wilson
#21. 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
#22. Some of my favorite films are musicals, like 'Walk the Line,' 'The Rose' and 'Lady Sings the Blues.' I just love the way the music and the story fuel each other.
Gina Prince-Bythewood
#23. 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
#24. 'Hound Dog' took like twelve minutes. That's not a complicated piece of work. But the rhyme scheme was difficult. Also the metric structure of the music was not easy. 'Kansas City' was maybe eight minutes, if that. Writing the early blues was spontaneous. You can hear the energy in the work.
Jerry Leiber
#25. 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
#26. Anytime a person can play the blues, he has a soul and he has a 'lift' to play anything else he wants to play. It's sort of like the foundation to a building.
Jimmy Rushing
#27. I have truly eclectic taste in music, and I seem to cycle through phases in terms of to what's inspiring me. I'll go from Beethoven to Sigur Ros; world music, Brit-pop, classic rock, blues/jazz, even the odd bit of heavy metal.
Rachel Miner
#28. There's only two kinds of music: the blues and zippety doo-dah.
Townes Van Zandt
#29. I just hope I'm remembered as a good blues musician.
Johnny Winter
#30. If you're going to get into music, you've got to learn the 12-bar blues.
Johnny Ramistella
#31. The music that I have always liked has always been more rooted in anger or sadness or alienation or any of those inspirational factors that drove rock'n'roll, gospel, and blues. I tend not to value a more pop aesthetic.
DJ Shadow
#32. My influences are jazz, blues, European classical music; they are rock music and pop music. So many kinds of music. World music from different countries like India and China. I think that would be a shame not to take advantage and do something ... not unique, because I don't have this pretension.
Rokia Traore
#33. 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
#34. 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
#35. 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
#36. I don't think of myself as a folk singer per se, but I really like blues and string-band music. When I started listening to records when I was a teenager, the folk boom was going on.
Loudon Wainwright III
#37. When Johnson started singing, he seemed like a guy who could have sprung from the head of Zeus in full armor.
Bob Dylan
#38. All riddles are blues, / And all blues are sad, / And I'm only mentioning / Some blues I've had.
Maya Angelou
#39. I was into playing American music, especially the blues.
Mark Knopfler
#40. I've always loved the blues, ever since I was a kid. It has a depth to it that a lot of contemporary music doesn't have. It has pain and suffering in it, but funny stories, too. And it is built on storytelling, which is something I really love.
Nickolas Ashford
#41. I would like to involve myself in some black music. I would like to do some blues and some gospel music. I want to try stuff from other genres and try to widen my musical base.
Greg Lake
#43. When I got a little bit older I wanted to play piano - that's all I wanted to do. I remember learning how to play a blues progression on the xylophone in music class and thinking "This is the greatest thing I've ever learned."
Zooey Deschanel
#44. 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
#45. Most blues don't have a beginning, middle, or end. You just cut a couple slices of blues.
Dave Van Ronk
#46. Everybody has the blues. Everybody longs for meaning. Everybody needs to love and be loved. Everybody needs to clap hands and be happy. Everybody longs for faith. In music, especially this broad category called jazz, there is a stepping-stone to all of these.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#47. Most of the music I've become interested in is hybrid in its originsClassical music, of course, is unbelievably hybrid. Jazz is an obvious amalgam. Bluegrass comes from eighteenth-century Scottish and Irish folk music that made contact with the blues. By exploring music, you're exploring everything.
Edgar Meyer
#48. There's always music that moves me. It doesn't necessarily mean that it's within the parenthesis of rock or blues, or whatever. It's usually far more reaching than that. It can be in many different genres.
Jimmy Page
#49. The blues ain't nothing but a good man feelin' bad.
Leon Redbone
#50. The Blues are a simple music and I'm a simple man. But the Blues aren't a science, the Blues can't be broken down like mathematics. The Blues are a mystery, and mysteries are never as simple as they look!
Johnny Ferreira
#51. 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
#52. When I heard "Pride and Joy" by Stevie Ray Vaughn on the radio, I just said "Hallelujah" .. he was just so good and strong and he would not be denied ... he single handedly brought guitar and blues oriented music back to the marketplace
Richard Betts
#53. Logically, when you talkin' about folk music and blues, you find out it's music of just plain people.
Brownie McGhee
#54. As far as we were concerned, we were just a blues band that had decided to write some scary music.
Ozzy Osbourne
#55. 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
#56. Blues is to jazz what yeast is to bread
without it, it's flat.
Carmen McRae
#57. Of course when you are a kid you listen to what your parents had around. A lot of gospel, jazz. Now when I started to listen to music on my own it was around the time of the birth of rock and roll. Shortly thereafter I started to get into more blues and more traditional rootsy American music.
Jorma Kaukonen
#59. When you break it all down, my punk rock is my dad's blues. It's music from the underground, and it's real, and it's written for the downtrodden in uncertain times.
Frank Iero
#60. I grew up with the Blind Boys' music. My family owns a music store in Claremont, California, called The Claremont Folk Music Center. I grew up with a heavy diet of gospel, folk, and blues because those are kind of the cornerstones of traditional American music.
Ben Harper
#61. When I think of music, I think of music in its totality, complete. From the lowest blues to the highest symphony, you know, so what I'd like to do is exemplify each style of as many periods as I can possibly do.
Donny Hathaway
#62. The workroom radio, tuned to FM 88.9, emitted Muddy Waters's throaty warbling. A rez station, WOJB did its best to hit every level of musical taste. Absolute bite-ya-in-the-ass blues was aired only during the wee hours.
Tracker's favorite time and music.
Mardi Oakley Medawar
#63. In my teenage years I was as addicted to great pop as I was to free jazz, electronic music, and hardcore blues.
Scott Walker
#64. Listen to positive music, watch positive videos or movies, hang out with positive, upbeat people. The last thing a blue mood need is more blues. Don't be volunteer victim; be a fighter.
Les Brown
#65. Gospel music is never pessimistic, it's never 'oh my god, its all going down the tubes', like the blues often is.
Brian Eno
#67. I find Indian music very funky. I mean it's very soulful, with their own kind of blues. But it's the only other school on the planet that develops improvisation to the high degree that you find in jazz music. So we have a lot of common ground.
John McLaughlin
#68. Blues musicians don't retire. They drop.
Buddy Guy
#69. I picked up the guitar very late, in a very pagan way - I didn't know how to play, but I knew I had to. I drew and I had a diary, but it wasn't enough; I needed to express more. As soon as I learned two notes, I started to tell a story, which is why, I guess, my music resembles blues or folk.
Lou Doillon
#70. With the Stray Cats at least, we really took the music somewhere else. First, we wrote our own songs. That's a real weak point in modern classics if you do rockabilly or blues.
Brian Setzer
#71. From the spiritual came the blues, gospel, and rhythm-and-blues. I heard all of that music growing up, and that has influenced how I approached classical music. I'm sure of it.
Kathleen Battle
#72. 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
#73. The consolidation of the music business has made it difficult to encourage styles like the blues, all of which deserve to be celebrated as part of our most treasured national resources.
Bonnie Raitt
#74. It was Muddy Waters who took the Delta blues north to Chicago, electrified the sound, and changed the course of popular music as we know it. That's pretty much the judgment of history, and it is mine as well.
Tim Cahill
#75. 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
#76. I stream this radio station, Radio Nova, that's based in Paris. They curate a beautiful set that's really all over the place - they'll play blues or some West African music, then A Tribe Called Quest, then funk from Ethiopia, then James Brown, and then the Beatles. It's an amazing mix.
Zoe Kravitz
#77. You might say that the universe plays the blues.
David Byrne
#78. If you don't live it, you don't believe it.
Paul Harvey
#79. When the slaves left Africa, they left us this music. They left us blues.
Youssou N'Dour
#80. 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
#81. 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
#82. 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.
Jim Sullivan
#83. One of my problems is I'm not really sure if I slot into rock or not. I've always tried to combine world music, folk, jazz, blues and rock, and have done since Traffic.
Steve Winwood
#84. I'm sure there are a few things in my CD collection that might surprise people. I like classical music, the blues, and I'm a big fan of alternative rock.
Brad Paisley
#85. 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
#86. 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
#87. The great British blues guitarists of the Sixties - people like Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page and Peter Green - could play like virtuosos, but they also understood the importance of energy and intensity
Joe Perry
#89. Jazz is like blues with a shot of heroin!
Miles Davis
#90. 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
#91. 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
#92. I grew up in the funk, rock and roll, blues and r&b tradition, and I came to this thing we call jazz later. And I came to improvise music from the standpoint of jazz; I was improvising, but within these other genres of music.
Hamid Drake
#93. That's the kind of musical freedom I like: jazz, rock, blues, anything. You adopt different attitudes when you play different music.
Alvin Lee
#94. I always loved Sam Cooke, because he seemed very versatile. He sang gospel, soul, blues, pop music.
Aaron Neville
#95. The blues are the roots and the other musics are the fruits. It's better keeping the roots alive, because it means better fruits from now on. The blues are the roots of all American music. As long as American music survives, so will the blues.
Willie Dixon
#96. When all the original blues guys are gone, you start to realize that someone has to tend to the tradition. I recognize that I have some responsibility to keep the music alive, and it's a pretty honorable position to be in.
Eric Clapton
#97. You know, the BBC had not been particularly generous in its deliverance of blues and esoteric kinds of music.
Keith Richards
#98. I think we as a band, as individuals, understand that all popular music stems from blues and jazz and even pop, but rock 'n' roll especially comes from blues.
David Johansen
#99. I only hope that one day, America will recognize what the rest of the world already has known, that our indigenous music - gospel, blues, jazz and R&B - is the heart and soul of all popular music; and that we cannot afford to let this legacy slip into obscurity, I'm telling you.
Quincy Jones
#100. I'm no ethnomusicologist. There is a connection between the five-note scale used both in traditional Chinese music and the blues, but I don't really understand it. All I know is, whenever I play with Chinese musicians, we seem to belong to the same musical gene pool.
Abigail Washburn
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