Johnny Van Zant Quotes

Elvis was a big influence to my music, but Loretta Lynn was, as well.

There weren't any white people in this country who didn't know who Gladys Knight was. Or the Pips were, as far as that's concerned.

There were a whole lot, I bought every blues record I could find, it wasn't just one or two people. My vocal influences were Ray Charles and Bobby Blue Bland.

Little Richard was it for me, man. Later, it was Ray Charles and Bobby 'Blue' Bland, B.B. King.

I've been influenced by so many great people, like Sam Moore, Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding, John Lee Hooker, B.B. King, so many great blues and soul artists that I completely revere. So it's strange for me, actually, to hear somebody say, 'Oh, I was deeply influenced by your music.'

You play a 'lowdown dirty shame slow and lonesome, my mama dead, my papa across the sea I ain't dead but I'm just supposed to be' blues. You can take that same blues, make it uptempo, a shuffle blues, that's what rock n' roll did with it. So blues ain't going nowhere. Ain't goin' nowhere.

When I was a kid, I always looked up to people like B.B. King and Ray Charles.

I always liked jazz. And my people liked the old blues, race records and the doo-wop and all that.

But I'm really into old music - bluesy, soulful singers, like Etta James, Ray Charles, and Aretha Franklin. I wouldn't have minded being born in the 1960s!

Though I'd always known in an intellectual way that rock and roll was a 'black' form - the way I know that English breakfast tea is Indian - I had never felt this truth.

I mean, rock 'n' roll is based on the blues, whether people want to know that or not.

After I moved with my mother to St. Louis, my older sister and I went to see Ike Turner, who was the hottest then. His music charged me. I was never attracted to him, but I wanted to sing with his band.

My sound comes from my inspiration, which is people like Aretha and Jay Z and Kanye, as well as everyone from the Whitneys and Mariahs to Destiny's Child and Usher. They all inspired me growing up.

From the spiritual came the blues, gospel, and rhythm-and-blues. I heard all of that music growing up, and that has influenced how I approached classical music. I'm sure of it.

I listened to King Oliver and I listened to Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, John Coltrane, Archie Shepp... I listened to everything I could that came from that place that they call the blues but, in formality, isn't necessarily the blues.

My dad has always been a big Ray Charles fan, and I've grown up listening to all kinds of music.

The muse of music isn't just from Greek mythology, but living in people like the Beatles, Chuck Berry, Anita Baker, Aretha Franklin.

A lot of my success comes from black music. It's something I'm very proud of.

I love Whitney Houston, Stevie Wonder, Brandi, Sade, Nat King Cole. I like the Beatles. I listen to a lot of that.

I have been influenced by many different artists at many different stages of my life. Starting out, it was people like Elton John, Billy Joel, Ben Folds, and Fiona Apple. As I got older I got deeper into the work of bands like the Beatles, artists like Sam Cooke, Ray Charles, Etta James, and Joni Mitchell.

I always loved LeAnn Rimes and especially Clint Black for his soulfulness. As I've gotten older, my influences have broadened - John Mayer, Michael Buble, Stevie Wonder, Keith Urban, Stevie Ray Vaughn, the Beatles - all of these artists have somehow been a part of my development as a songwriter.

I knelt at the altar of Ray Charles for years. I worked at a restaurant, and that's all there was on the jukebox.

The quality of our lives is diminished every time we lose a great artist. It's a different world without Sam Cooke, Otis Redding, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Curtis Mayfield, Brian Jones and the rest.

If there was no black man there would be no Rock'n'Roll. The beat, the rhythms of Africa are what created Rock'n'Roll and Jazz.

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.