Top 505 Blues Quotes

I had a problem with cops pulling me over all the time for speeding. When I was doing Hill Street Blues, the cops said how much they loved the show as they were writing me up; meanwhile my insurance went through the roof.

See, that’s nothing but blues, that’s all I’m singing about. It’s today’s blues.

The first time I ever heard the blues, my parents had a stack of records that they weren’t using anymore. I found them when I was ten; I didn’t know what it was. But I found Lightnin’ Hopkins.

On long car rides, we would always listen to the ‘Blues Brothers’ soundtrack and try to emulate everything that Aretha Franklin was doing. There was soul and grit in it that I think a kid from the suburbs really needed.

The blues is life itself.

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

All jazz comes from blues. Blues first.

My father and mother listened to oldies, from be-bop and swing music to – I hate to admit it, but – Barry Manilow, Fleetwood Mac and the Moody Blues.

There’s a lot of unreleased blues stuff I did with the Apollo Theater musicians, and there was of experimenting going on for me in the mid-’60s in that studio, which I think frustrated Columbia.

The protagonist in ‘Deacon Blues’ is a triple-L loser – an L-L-L Loser. It’s not so much about a guy who achieves his dream but about a broken dream of a broken man living a broken life.

Another thing to do with the blues is how they were recorded. They were done on the quick, and some of that stuff was made on wire, not even tape, let alone digital.

The story of American pop music is the story of failure. The blues, country music, it’s not the story of success. People don’t win; they lose.

The blues is like a planet. It’s an enormous topic. You can’t ignore the impact that it has had and continues to have on the whole musical culture. It’s a tree that everyone is swinging from. Without it, I don’t know where I would be. It’s indelible and indispensable.

I suppose I was waiting until I was old enough to have some sort of experience to sing about. When you’re young, it’s hard to sing the blues. Nobody believes you.

I learned jazz; that comes from blues. I learned rock; that comes from blues. I learned pop; that comes from blues. Even dance, that comes from blues, with the answer-and-response.

I began writing with Mike Pinder and eventually we went on to form a new band called The M&B, which later became The Moody Blues, what I would call a progressive blues band.

Depending on how I’m feeling that day or the music I’m listening to, I will pick appropriate lighting to help create the atmosphere for me. I use a lot of blues and purples.

I love blues. My grandfather did blues.

Music and the blues, they have taught me a lot. I think in this book, ‘Book Of Hours,’ there is this blues sensibility. There are moments of humor even in the sorrow, and I’m really interested in the way that the blues have that tragic-comic view of life – what Langston Hughes called ‘laughing to keep from crying.’

Blues ain’t never going anywhere. It can get slow, but it ain’t going nowhere.

My first concert was Chicago and Moody Blues. I was 15 years old.

I love walking down Beale Street, which is home to countless cafes, restaurants and bars. Every bar has a live band, and as you walk along the street in the evening you can hear raw blues and rock n’ roll spilling out of them.

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

Our repertoire consisted of rhythm and blues, sort of country rhythm and blues, Sonny Terry things.

I’m a big, big blues fan and the last several years I’ve really invested in the blues a lot, and I think my playing is getting better because of it – not necessarily better on a technical level, but certainly on a level of appropriateness.

The main three components are the blues, improvisation – which is some kind of element that people are trying to make it up – and swing, which means even though they’re making up music, they’re trying to make it up together. It feels great, like you’re having a great conversation with somebody.

I’ve always seen music as colours, with basses maybe translating to dark blues, and trebles as yellows and ochres and a general sense of lights coming through.

You don’t have to play the blues to play rock ‘n’ roll, but that’s where, somewhere along the line, your influences came from. I mean, I don’t care where you got it from. If you got it from Eric Clapton, he got it from the blues.

The blues is something separate from what I do. They connect at certain spots, but blues is different. I wouldn’t put it in with what my career has been. That would be a whole separate wing.

I would hear Steely Dan on the radio all the time, and I listened to ‘Aja’ a lot. I mean, ‘Black Cow’ and ‘Aja’ and ‘Deacon Blues’ and ‘Josie’ and ‘Peg’… all these songs are on one record. It’s crazy!

The starting point of all great jazz has got to be format, a language that you can work within that, in some ways, is much tighter than the blues or even gospel. It’s all working towards the same destination – the difference being that Miles Davis flew there, and I’m still taking the subway.

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.

I know some people will be surprised to hear it, but I’ve found that my music, whether its blues or rock, or whatever you want to call it, can be channeled into a positive direction that actually helps people.

The blues scale was the first thing I learned. It’s just a pentatonic scale with a flat seventh and a few notes that sound cool when you bend them. And because people have amalgamated the blues into this rock-blues scale, if you’re using it, you better sound like a real authentic blues player.

I finally learned to accept that I can’t make radio play blues any more than I could get Reagan out of the White House.

The blues is the foundation, and it’s got to carry the top. The other part of the scene, the rock ‘n’ roll and the jazz, are the walls of the blues.

I really enjoy spending Sunday evenings with friends, because Sunday evenings are always frightening. You are obsessed by the fact that you are working again the next day. And sometimes you get the blues.

It’s good to see young kids getting into the blues.

I remember my brother came home with a bass and played a blues solo on it. I just went insane for days afterwards learning that.

I tended to lean towards the guys who both sang and played, such as Ricky Skaggs, Vince Gill, Steve Wariner… And at the other end of the spectrum, I had Eric Clapton in a rock and blues sense, jazz guys such as Tal Farlow and Les Paul… Then Chet Atkins-type stuff.

Blues became rock, rock became soul, and all of it was colorblind.

As we all know, the evil of slavery and the sting of the whip have given us many things including the voice of Nina Simone, the prose of James Baldwin, the Air Jordan sneaker, the blues, jazz, moonwalking, and more recently gangsta rap.

The old Fleetwood Mac was much better; they did some beautiful and, to my mind, very authentic blues. Chicken Shack did pretty well in Europe, but after I left, it was over.

Blues is a natural fact, is something that a fellow lives. If you don’t live it you don’t have it. Young people have forgotten to cry the blues. Now they talk and get lawyers and things.

I cross-dressed as the judge in ‘Hill Street Blues,’ you know.

Sure, I get the blues. But what I try to do, is apply joy to the blues, you know? I don’t know if it’s a technique, or just being bent that way, being raised by the folks I was raised by.

I kind of got really, really into ‘Hill Street Blues’ when it came out. I used to leave a class early just to make sure I could watch the episode of ‘Hill Street Blues’ that day.

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.

I remember listening to the radio as a kid and finding that the songs always made me feel more peaceful. Funny, but the more hurtin’ the music was, the better it made me feel. I think of that now when I write my songs. I may not be feelin’ the blues myself, but I’m writing them for other people who have a hard life.

I’m just glad that I’m the musical equivalent of a character actress, because blues singers can keep singing and having an audience at 35, and someone like Madonna’s gonna have to find something else to do, ‘cos I don’t care how pointy those bras are that she wears, they’re still gonna look a little odd when she’s 55!

I consider myself much more of a blues singer now.

Gospel music is never pessimistic, it’s never ‘oh my god, its all going down the tubes’, like the blues often is.

To me, the blues is an infection. I don’t think it’s necessarily a melancholy thing; the blues can be really positive and I think I think anyone and everyone can have a place for the blues. It need not always a woeful, sorrowful thing. It’s more reflective; it reminds you to feel.