Blues Musicians Quotes

My primary influences were the best jazz players from the 50's and 60's and later some of the pop people from the same time period along with the better of the well known blues musicians.

The blues are the roots and the other musics are the fruits

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.

People out there maybe know who Junior Parker is and some of those Sun Records blues guys.

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

Blues is not a dream, blues is truth.

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

I've said that playing the blues is like having to be black twice. Stevie Ray Vaughan missed on both counts, but I never noticed.

I wanted to know everything about the blues. I think it constantly changes for me.

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

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

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

The blues are the roots and the other musics are the fruits. It's better keeping the roots alive, because it means better fruits from now on. The blues are the roots of all American music. As long as American music survives, so will the blues.

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.

I've listened to blues my whole life. I know it, I play it, I understand it.

Actually, my mother turned me on to the blues. We had Lightnin' Hopkins as well as Elvis Presley records.

This be an empty world without the blues.

The blues is the roots, the rest is the fruits.

I would look at older blues musicians who just keep going into their seventies. They keep doing it until they drop dead. And I've always felt like that's what I want to do. I've felt that since the day I was able to start playing music for a living. I don't see the point of thinking about retiring because it's not work to begin with.

I'm certain that it was an incredible gift for me to not only be friends with some of the greatest blues people who've ever lived, but to learn how they played, how they sang, how they lived their lives, ran their marriages, and talked to their kids.

Because we grew up in Australia, to find information about a lot of blues guys, I used to go to the library and find the jazz magazines. They didn't even sell them at the time in news agents and stuff.

Musically, though, you're a character and you're singing a song. If you're not your own character, you're the character in the song, most of the time. Even blues musicians, a lot of them who were the most realistic, at times, they were singing a song and portraying a character in the song. There's something to be said for getting involved in the emotion of a song, too, with the characters.

I believe in blues, and I believe that it's been misrepresented.

I played with Sam Lay, Jimmy Reed, Big Walter Horton, Big Moose Walker, and all those guys.

ZZ Top did get a chance to play with Lightnin' Hopkins and Jimmy Reed, there's still that one, single song we just can't shake... J.B. Hutto's "Combination Boogie".