My dad was very influential with the music he exposed me to. He was really into blues and folk, so he’d play me guys like Muddy Waters and T-Bone Walker and Richie Havens – a lot of very emotional players.
When the blues came out, it was something pure and undefined, but when all these white groups got hold of it, it became something else that didn’t sound anything like the original. So you had Led Zeppelin doing their thing, which had come all the way from the blues.
The blues has been in my life since I was little.
Forget reparations – we need to rescue aspects of black culture abandoned even by black folks, whether it is the blues or home cookin’ or broader forms of not just survival but triumph.
When Chuck Berry came along, what he did was more rock & roll than it was blues. It was more exciting. He was like the next step. I thought his first single, ‘Maybellene,’ was the greatest song in the world.
I love the intimacy of venues like the House of Blues. When everyone is packed in and so close to you, it makes you play differently. It’s so much more fun to play because there’s so much more high energy in a place like that.
I’m into hip-hop, rap, country, blues, gospel, old school, new school… whatever… pop. If it’s really good, I like it. I don’t have to be told what to listen to. If I like it and it’s good, I’ll listen to it.
Them pains, when blues pains grab you, you’ll sing the blues right.
When I’d hear something that sounded like I could follow it – most of those big band jazz tunes are blues anyway – I would hum it and play with the fiddle while I was humming.
So yeah, I am definitely a blues man at heart.
I don’t need the credits for playing the blues and paying the dues. I’ve already done it. There are some other things to do here – movies and scores and voice-overs.
We tried to make music that had a very diverse collection of genres – jazz, pop, Latin, even the blues. We tried to have a gumbo soup of expressions. We wanted to create music that would have people dive into a pool of artistic beauty and feel good. And I think we have been really blessed.
Every time the guys were knocked out by my guitar playing and the girls were knocked out by the type of songs I did. That set us apart from the average blues band.
I think I’m more influenced, just in general, not by blues artists, but more by stuff from Curtis Mayfield, Stevie Wonder. Stevie Wonder is probably my biggest musical influence of all. And Donny Hathaway.
It was just like Howlin’ Wolf. Once you arrive at the point that you understand it, the emotional factor is darker than some of the saddest blues stuff.
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.
All the best British groups were inspired by black American music. With The Beatles, it was Motown and the blues. With me, it was a mixture of British styles and the more sophisticated Seventies soul of Barry White and Marvin Gaye.
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.
Hill Street Blues might have been the first television show that had a memory. One episode after another was part of a cumulative experience shared by the audience.
There’s a very thin line between rock and funk. Funk is like a dirtier blues, and so is rock. They’re close cousins.
When I went to Memphis and Mississippi and Nashville, I learnt the blues is a whole way of life. I don’t really have the blues, but I can appreciate the honesty and the simplicity of it.
Saturday night is your big night. Everybody used to fry up fish and have one hell of a time. Find me playing till sunrise for 50 cents and a sandwich. And be glad of it. And they really liked the low-down blues.
Rhythm and blues started even before phonograph records were being produced because black people entertained themselves. It wasn’t done for money. It was done for entertainment. Most white people didn’t know anything about this because prejudice kept them from ever seeing what was going on.
I don’t try to just be a blues singer – I try to be an entertainer. That has kept me going.
I love the blues. I love rock. I love classic rock. I love country. All types of music I can appreciate.
I loved the Rolling Stones. I heard a little bit of country music creeping around the edges of some of their songs. Being a Mississippi kid, I could feel they had done their homework, even when I was a little boy. I could feel the Delta blues influence in a lot of their work.
Yeah; I’m a much better blues player than anybody knows, but being in the kind of group I’m in, we were always trying to make popular records.
I seen a lot of changes. You got to make changes. I even make changes in my blues.
In the blues, it just takes so long for us to get recognized.
I just play blues for fun.
Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck made me an Anglophile. I listened to English and Irish artists as a kid, and they were way louder, heavier, and faster than the traditional blues that I was listening to.
Linda’s in all the songs. ‘Sunshine Superman,’ ‘Hampstead Incident,’ ‘Young Girl Blues’… Linda’s the muse.
What’s so powerful about the Psalms are, as well as they’re being gospel and songs of praise, they are also the blues.
