Chicago Blues Quotes

I grew up listening to Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf and lots of blues, R&B and Motown.

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 like the wildness of Buddy Guy.

When I was a kid, we didn't have any blues stations. I never heard Howlin' Wolf or Muddy Waters or any of those people until the Stones had come along, and I took it upon myself to find out who these people were that they were covering.

Little Walter and Muddy Waters were incredible. And Bo Diddley was doing some great stuff, too.

Is there one blues guy who was the most sophisticated and influential, like Duke Ellington or Louis Armstrong in jazz? Was it Muddy Waters, Little Walter, Lightnin' Hopkins, John Lee Hooker, B.B. King, Robert Johnson, or all of them? I think you have to pick all of them.

Definitely Muddy Waters has been a prime influence for anybody who's ever done anything rock 'n' roll.

Every time I try to set something in Chicago, I get intimidated by 'Augie March.' It's easy to set something in Indianapolis - we don't have 'Augie March' here. But I love writing about Chicago, and I love being there and imagining lives in Chicago. I hope to set something there in the future, but it's intimidating.

The blues is played everywhere. There's no place I've been where they don't have blues or aren't interested in blues.

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

John Lee Hooker is the funkiest man alive

I was staying with my sister and messing around with the guitar every day for my own amusement. Then she took me around and introduced me to Muddy Waters, Jimmy Rogers, Little Walter, and the first time I saw that onstage, it inspired me to play. I thought that was the world.

Muddy Waters, I suppose, was my first great hero. You know, every boy wants to be a guitar player, and Muddy Waters was just the king. He was the King Bee. He was it.

I've always wanted the sound of Muddy Waters' early records - only louder

Knowing that more people associate Chicago with street violence than generosity is difficult for me because, despite all my proclamations of being from the Bay Area, I have spent much of my life in Chicago. So I have a deep love and a pretty good understanding of the city.

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.

Sonny Boy Williamson (II) was a beautiful guy, a straight guy... (but) he was always raising hell one way or another, so you never could tell if he was drunk or sober.

The Great Migration changed American history not just for the migrants but for all of us. It made possible American cultural milestones like the Harlem Renaissance, Chicago blues, and Motown, just to name a few.

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

I think of rock 'n' roll as a combination of country blues and swing band music, not Chicago blues, and modern pop.

Hardly a day goes by without me sticking on a Muddy Waters record.

After my early days of being a passionate young Elvis fan, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, etc. I got interested in Ray Charles and Ella Fitzgerald. Then I got turned on to the blues. I realized how important it was to our music in England at the time. Everyone was into the blues. Then you start looking at the different kinds of blues, and you follow the journey backwards from Chicago to earlier times back down to the Delta to the Memphis Blues.

I liked the more sophisticated urban style of blues like Ray Charles and B. B. King, Bobby Blue Bland, Lou Rawls; people like that with more of a tendency toward jazz.

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

Coming up in Chicago, we heard a lot of blues.