I was always a closet blues player.
I love blues, mellow rock ‘n’ roll.
The blues brings you back into the fold. The blues isn’t about the blues, it’s about we have all had the blues and we are all in this together.
I was singing the blues when I was six. Kind of sad, eh?
Country music, like rock or blues, can move over into a lot of different areas.
The Moody Blues were a blues band, so when we got discovered, we were taken to London. That’s where we started to make it. That’s where the record labels were. That’s where the action was.
Oh, I listened to a lot of the blues. I love the blues. You know, Slim Harpo, people like that, and Sonny Boy Williamson.
I always liked jazz. And my people liked the old blues, race records and the doo-wop and all that.
I think it was that we were really seasoned musicians. We had serious roots that spanned different cultures, obviously the blues.
I got to see all these incredible blues players, like Jimmy Reed.
The world I live in is benefiting from things like satellite radio. Jazz and blues fests are everywhere now, and Americana is going strong on college radio. What I’m hearing is an appreciation of real music.
The blues tells a story. Every line of the blues has a meaning.
I go out with my band six months of the year and the rest of them with the Blues Brothers.
Every girl is a singer. I wanted to learn the solos and play lead guitar. I would meticulously teach myself solos so when dudes were like, ‘Oh, you’re a girl, you can’t play guitar,’ I could rip these insane Telecaster blues solos and tell them, ‘Yeah, I can burn up a fret board.’
Everyone tried to be a singer other than just a player. We had four voices in The Moody Blues.
Before I left, I opened a lot of doors for a lot of people to play the blues.
Don’t waste your time away thinkin’ ’bout yesterday’s blues.
I love harmonicas – old blues players like Sonny Boy Williamson.
Without the blues, modern music would be nothing like it is now – not remotely.
The first record I heard as a kid? My dad is a great soul and blues fan, so he showed me James Brown. That was my first stuff, and I loved it.
I had listened to Joe Turner. When they’d book Joe there, I’d play the blues behind him.
I’m not committed to putting myself up for a blues guitarist, even though I love playing the blues.
We were either listening to jazz or Robert Johnson, the old blues man, but not to our peers.
At our peril, we ignore the fact that black vernacular, like the blues, both has a form and performs… For just as there would be no American music without black folks, there would be very little of our American language.
A lot of those early blues records and soul records were pretty much live. It was what it was, and they had goofs and mistakes, but it still kept its charm. We have to remember to keep the feel. It’s so important.
When you are through with the blues, you’ve got nothing to rest on.
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.
It’s true that when I was younger and I first got interested in music, I used to read books about the Stones and the Beatles and how they listened to Muddy Waters and people like that when they were starting out, who are much less well known now than the Rolling Stones. The Stones really changed blues.
We didn’t go for music that sounded like blues, or jazz, or rock, or Led Zeppelin, or Rolling Stones. We didn’t want to be like any of the other bands.
You can’t seperate modern jazz from rock or from rhythm and blues – you can’t seperate it. Because that’s where it all started, and that’s where it all come from – that’s where I learned to keep rhythm – in church.
The first thing I heard was spiritual music, which was imbedded. The second thing I heard was swing. And shortly, along with that, I began to hear the blues. And then I began to hear Latin music. Each one left its mark.
AC/DC is a prime example of taking that blues rock thing and just living in that world. They only really move the furniture around a little on each album, but it still works.
If T-Bone Walker had been a woman, I would have asked him to marry me. I’d never heard anything like that before: single-string blues played on an electric guitar.
I’d go over to friends’ houses and ask them to put on some Howlin’ Wolf, and they wouldn’t know what I was talking about. Then, when they would come over to my house, I’d play them some blues. Their parents wouldn’t let them come back. The blues were still called ‘race records’ back then.
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.
I listen more to music when I’m on my computer. I’m into the latest YouTube thing. I’m a nanosecond kind of listener, but if I’m driving I would be listening to a Merle Haggard box set. It’s a weird experience listening to ‘Working Man Blues’ by Merle Haggard and cruising around in a Porsche.
It was a time after ‘Lady Sings the Blues’ and ‘Mahogany’ and all those romantic movies: I became this romantic figure on the street in a very special way.
I grew up in Memphis, Tennessee. Big time blues and music city. It’s always been in my bloodline.
I like blue a lot, and greens. Earthy blues and greens.
The first thing I learned was the ‘St Louis Blues’ when I was eight. Both my grandmothers, my mother and uncle played the piano. This was post-war Britain, and they played boogie woogie and blues, which was the underground music of the time.
I really appreciate when someone can blow me away with live acoustic blues.
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?
New Orleans is just so full of culture in the music content – blues, folk. I was introduced to a lot of things. My mother didn’t keep me away from other music. She only kept me away from rap. The closest I got to rap was D’Angelo.
My dad was my first influence. He played classical guitar and my uncle Ron played the blues.
Venues had segregated seating – but when Chuck Berry fused together blues, boogie-woogie and country music, it caused people not to be able to sit still. They bounced up out of their seats, knocking over ropes, dancing together.
My style of singing has always been referred to ‘soul’ singing when it fact it’s more influenced by English R&B Blues Shouting. I’m closer to Led Zeppelin as a vocalist than to Ella Fitzgerald. It was torture dealing with major labels.
I still think the best metal bands have a blues feel. The first Black Sabbath album is kind of a bludgeoning of blues. Deep Purple also started out as a blues band.
It’s marvelous when you visit Tokyo: they have these clubs, and they’ll have ‘Motown Night’ or ‘The Beatles – Totally Authentic and Live!’ You know it’s shrunk, but at least there’s some sort of youthful figure to it. Whereas, the blues scene in Europe is more like, ‘Here we go again.’
I like to play guitar, jam out, play the blues, go watch movies. I love movies.
Well, I grew up on the blues, man!
The early influences, in many ways, were in Baltimore. I was passing open windows where there might be a radio playing something funky. In the summertime, sometimes there’d be a man sitting on a step, playing an acoustic guitar, playing some kind of folk blues. The seed had been planted.
I think education was the key for me, and that’s what I tell kids. That base in the classics gave me something to springboard from, which I wouldn’t have had if I’d come out to Los Angeles early and been guest punk of the week on ‘Hill Street Blues.’
I listened to classical guitar and Spanish guitar, as well as jazz guitar players, rock and roll and blues. All of it. I did the same thing with my voice.
Eric Clapton was such a great player. He sounds like he’s Freddie King or someone like that. He plays the roots of blues and Delta blues. He really affected me with the way that he plays, because he never really plays that many notes.
I wouldn’t call myself a jazz player or a blues player.
I had always intended to make a living out of playing blues. But I never admitted it to myself. I don’t suppose I could have given a logical reason for it ever becoming possible to do so.
I never liked blues and I really didn’t like jazz. I liked Chuck Berry.
The blues are what I’ve turned to, what has given me inspiration and relief in all the trials of my life.
I went through a whole blues period in the Nineties, and that had some influence on ‘Load’ and ‘ReLoad.’
They don’t bother too much with the balance and things on blues records.
Blues players are around for 50 years, and that’s just fine.
A lot of what I listened to growing up was blues, but also folk and indie music. So there’s this marriage of songs that structurally are quite bluesy. Sound-wise, there’s a lot of indie as well. But you can’t really say I’m pop-blues, because that’s insulting to blues. It just can’t exist.
