Blues Guitar Quotes

I was inspired to play electric guitar from listening to a lot of Carlos Santana, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and B.B. King, and that's always been the kind of music that I gravitate toward.

Close to my heart is Muddy Waters. I love the way he sang. It was almost like a bark. It was like the bark of a dog: it's not fancy. Sometimes it's not like singing; it's like shouting.

I think guitar-wise, Eric Clapton was a big influence on me. I got to spend time around him. He's kind of strange, mysterious, serious and he always has played such hot guitar.

Eric Clapton's scales - when he comes off a high note and it's time for a refrain or a little bit of a rest, he peals off scales going downwards that are so good it's unbelievable.

Growing up in Dallas, my first influences on the guitar were T-Bone Walker and Les Paul. T-Bone taught me how to play lead guitar behind my head and do the splits in 1951 when I was nine.

I've always been a fan of Buddy Guy as a guitarist, as well as Stevie Ray Vaughan and those blues guys. I'd say those are pretty big influences on me.

And as long as people have problems, the blues can never die.

You've heard me call myself a bluesman and a blues singer. I call myself a blues singer, but you ain't never heard me call myself a blues guitar man. Well, that's because there's been so many can do it better'n I can, play the blues better'n me. I think a lot of them have told me things, taught me things.

I love Muddy Waters and Nina Simone. I also watched 'The Blues Brothers' movie over and over.

I was glad to see other blues guitarists like Albert King have crossover successes like me. We played in the same places like the Whisky and the Filmore. When Albert made his guitar cry, he could cut you so deep!

My dad was my first influence. He played classical guitar and my uncle Ron played the blues.

I just like the blues better than rock 'n' roll.

I'm not like other guitar players. In fact, I'm not even like most acoustic players because I use the nylon-string acoustic. I do play steel-string and the electric guitar, too, because I love rock 'n' roll and guitarists like Jimi Hendrix. But my bread and butter has always been the nylon-string.

I've always had a great love for the blues.

I'm a rock/blues guitar player. I'm not wanting to be a pop star or anything.

The blues appealed to me, but so did rock. The early rockabilly guitarists like Cliff Gallup and Scotty Moore were just as important to me as the blues guitarists.

Duane Allman was the best guitar player I ever heard who didn't read a note.

Most blues guitar players don't concentrate on singing and melodies. And forget about the bridge - the bridge doesn't exist. They go straight for the solo.

If you can play the blues, you can do anything.

The way Will Moore taught me, and the way I play it, the blues is just something different.

A lot of people wonder, what is the blues? Well, I'm gonna tell you what the blues is.

The blues - there's no black and white - it's the truth.

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.

My blues are so simple, but so few people can play it right

I like the blues a lot. I grew up on it.