Benjamin Booker Quotes

The falsetto stuff, it must be a reaction to the black gospel singers that I really enjoy listening to.

I grew up listening to spiritual music, Blind Willie Johnson and folk.

I liked blues from the time my mother used to take me to church. I started to listen to gospel music, so I liked that. But I had an aunt at that time, my mother's aunt who bought records by people like Lonnie Johnson, Robert Johnson, Blind Lemon Jefferson, and a few others.

I dabbled in things like Howlin' Wolf, Cream and Led Zeppelin, but when I heard Son House and Robert Johnson, it blew my mind. It was something I'd been missing my whole life. That music made me discard everything else and just get down to the soul and honesty of the blues.

There was nobody at the time who was playing slide guitar like Johnny, and nobody, or no white guys at least, that was playing country blues like that on the acoustic guitar. And it was at that point that I realized what Johnny had to offer.

I've done gospel songs on every album.

I've always liked acoustic blues. I liked Bob Dylan a lot.

My favorite country blues player was Big Bill Broonzy. City blues was Freddie King, but I liked them all - Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Ralph Willis, Lonnie Johnson, Brownie McGhee and the three Kings, B.B., Albert and Freddie. Jazz-wise, I listened to Django, Barney Kessel and Wes Montgomery.

Of course that was my idol, Son House. I think he did a lot for the Mississippi slide down there.

Charley Patton is the original inspiration. I didn't play anything when I was a kid. Then, when I was 20, I went into my mam's bedroom because she had a double mirror, and I wanted to see what the back of my hair was doing. She had an alarm-clock radio, and it came on with this old guy moaning and hollering, playing this strange guitar.

I was into Jimi Hendrix, Robert Johnson, the blues.

My musical education was grounded in blues and Chicago blues - John Lee Hooker and Otis Redding.

I heard Robert Johnson way before I heard about Eric Clapton.

My thought was I should try to stick with names that people may recognize like Robert Johnson, Son House, and Hoagy Carmichael, so if somebody cared to research, they would find a wealth of material.

The parallel development in American blues to the British movement has resulted in Johnny Winters.

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.

The music that I listen to is very minimalistic. I listen to a lot of old blues that is just guitar and vocals.

Small Faces were really a soul band as far as we were concerned. That's what we listened to; that's what we played, you know? We were pretty much based on Booker T. and the M.G.'s.

I am, and always will be, a blues guitarist.

Charlie Patton, who was born in 1891, recorded some of the very first blues. In 'Pony Blues' and 'Peavine Blues,' he manages to pile dense layers of rhythms one upon the other.

The first band I identified with from Chicago was the Muddy Waters band.

My first album, 'Get Lifted,' was a hip-hop soul album that had some of its roots in the church, as far as the sonic choices, in the way that I sing and write songs. I have always had that as part of my background and part of my influence when I am making music.

I got to see all these incredible blues players, like Jimmy Reed.

I've always loved the blues, John Lee Hooker, Janis Joplin, Hendrix.

I love the sound of Elmore James, the sound early guitarists like him got just by using minimal means.