Doo-wop was full of blues for me.
Jazz is the big brother of the blues. If a guy’s playing blues like we play, he’s in high school. When he starts playing jazz it’s like going on to college, to a school of higher learning.
I never wanted to be like other blues singers. I might like hearing them play, but I’ve never wanted to be anyone other than myself. There are a few people that I’ve wished I could play like, but when I tried, it didn’t work.
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.
The Band is probably the ultimate example of people taking all kinds of music, from gospel to blues to mountain music to folk music to on and on and on and on and putting them all in this big pot and mixing up a new gumbo.
I wouldn’t think a blues album would be that commercially successful, but I don’t really care. I’d do it for the love of blues, not for the money. I’ve got plenty of money.
I’m not good enough to be playin’ much acoustic guitar onstage. Man, you gotta get so right; I mean, the tones, the feel, the sound. Plus, acoustic blues guitar is just that much harder on the fingers.
There was a time we decided that it was songs that were done especially from my background because of the things we were dealing with, but nowadays, anybody who has a need, and can find the need, they can sing the blues.
I was into playing American music, especially the blues.
With the White Stripes we were trying to trick people into not realising we were playing the blues. We did not want to come off like white kids trying to play black music from 100 years ago so a great way to distract them was by dressing in red, white and black.
I’d do the blues all the time if I could, that’s what I’m into. But people just don’t like to hear it.
Listen to really old blues guys and how they weren’t allowed to sing about what they meant; they alluded to things. I find that style amusing, and I think it’s a little harder to write.
I grew up on the precursors to rock and roll, rhythm and blues.
I used to listen to the radio, and when I was about 18 years old, B.B. King was a disc jockey and he had a radio program, 15 minutes a day, over in West Memphis, Arkansas, and he would play the blues.
I can show you that I have played with just about every jazz musician, every African musician, every blues musician. It’s not like I’m cashing in on a false concept. This is what I do.
I met musician Ken Farmer in Lorne and he lent me all of his Bessie Smith blues LPs. That’s when I started to sing.
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.
I was exposed to jazz and blues and gospel and country music and rock, and I was the only kid I knew who knew about that stuff.
To me, blues is more of a feel and a vibe, rather than sitting there and saying, ‘Well, I’m gonna play bluesy now.’
I’ve never been an all-black girl. I like pinks and blues and greens. If you come over to my closet, you’ll be able to find a rainbow of things to wear.
I was in a rock band; I was my own folk singer; I was in a death metal band for a very short time; I was in a cover band, a jazz band, a blues band. I was in a gospel choir.
I’m certain that it was an incredible gift for me to not only be friends with some of the greatest blues people who’ve ever lived, but to learn how they played, how they sang, how they lived their lives, ran their marriages, and talked to their kids.
I think you can hear the Delta blues thing in something like the intro to ‘Heaven in This Hell,’ which has that down-home acoustic riff.
The Great Migration changed American history not just for the migrants but for all of us. It made possible American cultural milestones like the Harlem Renaissance, Chicago blues, and Motown, just to name a few.
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.
Blues, rock and hip hop are more about a lifestyle and culture than notes on a page.
I guess I would call my music ‘blues punk.’ There’s a lot of influences.
The parallel development in American blues to the British movement has resulted in Johnny Winters.
James Brown came from that hard, rough life that I came from. He took the blues and added rhythm to it. And he always had the most funkiest band; I liked the way he took his words and mixed it in with the band.
For a black male, the sound of the blues is pre-Civil Rights. It’s oppression.
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.
I will sing happy songs, and I do sing happy songs, but the stuff that’s going to move me and going to make me close my eyes is always the blues.
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.
Hill Street Blues gave me an opportunity to work with an ensemble cast of people whose work I admired.
I played ball for the Hollywood Blues of the Pacific Coast League, and I thought I was going to be a major leaguer. But I was the only one who seemed to think so.
In September 2012, I got the blues pretty bad, so I stopped playing for a little while. I started to renew my playing by the time February of 2013 came around. I would go up and rehearse to different songs, play stuff like Count Basie records, jazz or rap.
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.
I want to go back to the format that radio started with rock n’ roll, with country artists and rhythm and blues with that oldies type feeling. I want to put it all together and create a Top 40 of rhythm and blues and country and straight blues with Wolfman at the reins.
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?
We just sang real simple songs in a simple way that got to people. We didn’t try to tart them up with orchestral arrangements and all the stuff. We were all blues fanatics. We like R+B and blues and simple, gut-feeling music.
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.
Of all the songs we played, ‘Statesboro Blues’ was the most ripped-off.
I had just discovered jazz, and I started singing in a kind of blues cover band at the age of 15. We called ourselves – it was a terrible name – the Blue Zoots. We couldn’t actually get our hands on zoot suits, nor did we dress in blue. We did covers of Screamin’ Jay Hawkins and kind of Blues Brothers repertoire stuff.
Blues and soul and jazz music has so much pain, so much beauty of raw emotion and passion.
I’m a blues guy at heart, so silly music isn’t generally what I do. I’m a I’ll-cry-as-my-guitar-gently-weeps kind of guy.
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.
When I was sixteen, I wrote the first hundred or so pages of a novel about a piano that was haunted by the ghost of an evil blues musician.
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’.
That’s the kind of musical freedom I like: jazz, rock, blues, anything. You adopt different attitudes when you play different music.
Blues is one of the most important art forms. It’s an amazing music, and we don’t want to lose it.
A guy will promise you the world and give you nothin’, and that’s the blues.
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.
When I was in the country and I was trying to play, nobody seemed to pay too much attention to me. People used to say, ‘That’s just that ole blues singer.’
In blues, classical and jazz, you get more revered with age.
In the sixties when Paul was with the Beatles and I was with the Moody Blues, we shared the same bill and tried to blow each other off the stage.
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.
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.
‘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.
