Blues Quotes
59 quotes
"If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDEDFOR THE EXISTENCE OF GODWAS MUSIC"
"The harmonica has musical wind, and is the breath of soul. It’s like a sad, lonely I love you lost in the breeze."
"Amy [Winehouse] changed pop music forever, I remember knowing there was hope, and feeling not alone because of her. She lived jazz, she lived the blues."
"Musically, he was like an old man in a boy's skin."
"....Charles laughingly observed,'Gospel and the blues are really, if you break it down, almost the same thing. It's just a question of whether you're talkin' about a woman or God."
"Now listen for your song. Everybody’s got a song. When I used to chase the Trane— John Coltrane that is— he used to tell me, ‘If I know a man’s sound, I know the man.’ Do you hear the melody playing in your mind? Does it move you, nudge you off your seat?"
"You play me with your jazz & leave me with the blues."
"And here's to the blues, the real blues— where there's a hint of hope in every cry of desperation."
"We start our lives with blues . . . with music. It's our first language. It's the rhythm of the womb. It's your mama's heartbeat inside your head."
"Let the blue of the sky and ocean take your blue away when you feel blue"
"I value individuals and societies. I care about those who are not born yet. That is the reason for my joys and blues."
"The music echoes in the emptiness. It reminds us where we came from and where we’re bound."
"You got infinite channels and limitless rhymes, but the riddles of livin' stay undefined?"
"The music plays . . . and your sense of reality is heightened to a dream."
"Rats! It's rainy outside,And to be a good fellaInvite a smile so wideNobody needs umbrella!"
"Stop thinking about the steps. There are no moves in blues, only movement. Just listen to the music,” Matt whispered into my ear.I let go, softening into his arms. The sways became steps, and without even realising, I was dancing."
"Night after night on starry wingsNight lovers soared so highMiles apart, across the oceansTheir love forgot to sighIn heavenly flight’s timelessnessThat highest height treasuredInto the deepest of all bluesTheir depth of love measured.From the poem 'The Ballad of Night Lovers"
"The guitar poured out its soul, its history, its dreams, its pain, its victories, its secrets. The guitar’s strings purred with blues and ended with a haunting solitary song with no lyrics."
"The guitar breathed. It inhaled and exhaled, and music filled the shop as the instrument picked the heartbreak of generations."
"A real musician ain’t gonna choose his own guitar like an evil master choosing his slave. The guitar will choose his master and when he does, you’ll know it."
"Moment by moment, in life's winter life frozeEchoing a history of blues, a milestone rose"
"For me there is something primitively soothing about this music, and it went straight to my nervous system, making me feel ten feet tall."
"She's no lady. Her songs are all unbelievably unhappy or lewd. It's called Blues. She sings about sore feet, sexual relations, baked goods, killing your lover, being broke, men called Daddy, women who dress like men, working, praying for rain. Jail and trains. Whiskey and morphine. She tells stories between verses and everyone in the place shouts out how true it all is."
"At first the music almost repelled me, it was so intense, and this man made no attempt to sugarcoat what he was trying to say, or play. It was hard-core, more than anything I had ever heard. After a few listenings I realized that, on some level, I had found the master, and that following this man's example would be my life's work."
"I'm a bluesman moving through a blues-soaked America, a blues-soaked world, a planet where catastrophe and celebration- joy and pain sit side by side. The blues started off in some field, some plantation, in some mind, in some imagination, in some heart. The blues blew over to the next plantation, and then the next state. The blues went south to north, got electrified and even sanctified. The blues got mixed up with jazz and gospel and rock and roll."
Cornel West, Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud, A Memoir
"When Johnson started singing, he seemed like a guy who could have sprung from the head of Zeus in full armor."
"You see, there's some blues for folks ain't never had a thing, and that's a sad blues ... but the saddest kind of blues is for them that's had everything they ever wanted and has lost it, and knows it won't come back no more. Ain't no sufferin' in this world worse than that; and that's the blue we call 'I Had It But It's All Gone Now."
"These babies ain’t just guitars; these babies are living, breathing instruments."
"When you scratch these guitars, they bleed."
"You might say that the universe plays the blues."
"I had hooked up my iPod to the speakers. The air was filled with the raw, sexy purr of Etta James. "The thing that's great about the blues," I told Luke, pausing to sip from my glass of wine, "is that it's about feeling, loving, wanting without the brakes on. No one's brave enough to live that way. Except maybe musicians."
"The blues was bleeding the same blood as me."
"When there's music in your soul, there's soul in your music."
"- Why is depression the blues and not the grays? - Because racer!-Jarod Kintz and Stefan D"
"Love caught me with my pants down, watering skeleton flowers and humming the blues."
"And a ride in a hearse tells us we’re all close to that final cruise . . . when the body dies and we move on. It’s just the body, man. It’s just the body. The soul’s already gone. So don’t be afraid of a dead body absent a soul. It’s empty, man. No resident. What you need to worry about is a living body that’s lost its soul. Now that is scary, man.” - Funk N. Wagnalls, owner of the Grim Reapers auto lot, a character in Professor Brown Shoes Teaches the Blues."
"Your muse ain't singin' on your MTV? Can't even see him on your HD TV?"
"Starlight is best felt at noon..."
"Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever i find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet... I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me."
"Parenthood always comes as a shock. Postpartum blues? Postpartum panic is more like it. We set out to have a baby what we get is a total take-over of our lives."
"I'm very lucky that people are able to say, 'Oh, that's that Moody Blues guy!' I'm very fortunate with that. That's all. Without the songs, I think, I'd just be a pretty average karaoke singer. In the end, it comes down to the songs: the strength of the songs."
"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."
"My idea of heaven is a place where the Tyne meets the Delta, where folk music meets the blues."
"The blues. It runs through all American music. Somebody bending the note. The other is the two-beat groove. It's in New Orleans music, it's in jazz, it's in country music, it's in gospel."
"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."
"From the first album, Led Zeppelin was always going to be a totally new approach from what had gone before - whether it was approaching the blues or folk music like 'Babe I'm Gonna Leave You': nothing existed like that."
"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."
"One thing the blues ain't, is funny."
"I'm a human being. I feel all emotions. I'm not just happy all the time. Sometimes, I'm sad and feel the blues. Sometimes I even want to feel the blues. Sometimes, you want to feel down."
"There's no way in the world I can feel the same blues the way I used to. When I play in Chicago, I'm playing up-to-date, not the blues I was born with. People should hear the pure blues - the blues we used to have when we had no money."
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