168 Blues Music Quotes

Following is our list of blues music quotations and slogans full of insightful wisdom and perspective about awesome.

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Famous Blues Music Quotes

The blues had a baby and they called it rock and roll. - Muddy Waters

The blues had a baby and they called it rock and roll. — Muddy Waters

The blues will always be because the blues are the roots of all American music. — Willie Dixon

Everything comes out in blues music: joy , pain , struggle . Blues is affirmation with absolute elegance. — Wynton Marsalis

The blues is a mighty long road. Or it could be a river, one that twists and turns and flows into a sea of limitless musical potential. — Billy Gibbons

Blues is a natural fact, is something that a fellow lives. If you don't live it you don't have it. Young people have forgotten to cry the blues. Now they talk and get lawyers and things. — Big Bill Broonzy

Some of the greatest blues music is some of the darkest music you've ever heard. — Bruce Springsteen

The blues is the foundation, and it's got to carry the top. The other part of the scene, the rock 'n' roll and the jazz, are the walls of the blues. — Luther Allison

If you don't know the blues... there's no point in picking up the guitar and playing rock and roll or any other form of popular music. — Keith Richards

Simple music is the hardest music to play and blues is simple music. — Albert Collins

Blues is easy to play, but hard to feel. - Jimi Hendrix

Blues is easy to play, but hard to feel. — Jimi Hendrix

Every bad situation is a blues song waiting to happen. — Amy Winehouse

Funk, gospel, blues is all out of slavery times, out of depression, out of sorrow. — Nina Simone

I would think, to me, growing up in the south, growing up with all the gospel music, singing in the church and having that rhythm and blues - the blues background was my big inspiration. — Jackie DeShannon

Sounds like the blues are composed of feeling, finesse, and fear. — Billy Gibbons

The blues tells a story. Every line of the blues has a meaning. - John Lee Hooker

The blues tells a story. Every line of the blues has a meaning. — John Lee Hooker

Short Blues Music Quotes

  • Blues is to jazz what yeast is to bread--without it, it's flat. — Carmen McRae
  • All the classic jazz players all sang and a lot of 'em sang blues. — Mose Allison
  • I love classic rock, rock and roll, that's the top notch. I love soul - bluesy music as well. — Haley Reinhart
  • You don't have to live the blues to play the blues. — Herbie Mann
  • When you ain’t got no money, you got the blues. — Howlin' Wolf
  • White folks hear the blues come out, but they don't know how it got there. — Ma Rainey
  • My guitar is my torch, my soul carries the flame. Make no mistake, I'm a true blues man. — Big Bill Morganfield
  • I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues. — Duke Ellington

Top 10 Blues Music Quotes

Everybody started calling my music rock and roll, but it wasn't anything but the same rhythm and blues I'd been playing down in New Orleans. — Fats Domino

I would like to involve myself in some black music. I would like to do some blues and some gospel music. I want to try stuff from other genres and try to widen my musical base. — Greg Lake

With the Stray Cats at least, we really took the music somewhere else. First, we wrote our own songs. That's a real weak point in modern classics if you do rockabilly or blues. — Brian Setzer

They say the blues is sad, but when B.B. sings 'I got a sweet little angel, I love the way she spreads her wings,' that don't sound too sad to me! — Buddy Guy

Motown was about music for all people – white and black, blue and green, cops and the robbers. I was reluctant to have our music alienate anyone. — Berry Gordy

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. — Jimmy Page

No yoga exercise, no meditation in a chapel filled with music will rid you of your blues better than the humble task of making your own bread. — M. F. K. Fisher

The musicians that didn't know music could play the best blues. I know that I don't want no musicians who know all about music playin' for me. — Alberta Hunter

Jazz is the only music in which the same note can be played night after night but differently each time. — Ornette Coleman

If you don't live it, you don't believe it. — Paul Harvey

Blues Music Image Quotes

Blues music quote Life is like a piano, the white keys represent happiness and the black shows sadness, but as you go
Life is like a piano, the white keys represent happiness and the black shows sadness, but as you go through life's journey, remember that the black keys also makes music.

Blues Music And Life Quotes

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. — Jack White

The further jazz moves away from the stark blue continuum and the collective realities of Afro-American and American life, the more it moves into academic concert-hall lifelessness, which can be replicated by any middle class showing off its music lessons. — Imamu Amiri Baraka Jones

The further jazz moves away from the stark blue continuum and the collective realities of Afro-American and American life, the more it moves into academic concert-hall lifelessness, which can be replicated by any middle class showing off its music lessons. — Amiri Baraka

Blues music quote Behind every girl's favorite song there is an untold story.
Behind every girl's favorite song there is an untold story.

The whole of life itself expresses the blues. That's why I always say the blues are the true facts of life expressed in words and song, inspiration, feeling and understanding. The blues can be about anything pertaining to the facts of life. The blues call on God as much as a spiritual song do. — Willie Dixon

One must go through life, be it red or blue, stark naked and accompanied by the music of a subtle fisherman, prepared at all times for a celebration. — Francis Picabia

The blues are just a heightened sense of awareness of life's ups and downs, and things that a guy sees after a couple hits of Jack Daniels. — Steven Tyler

Blues music quote The earth has music for those who listen.
The earth has music for those who listen.

Jazz speaks for life. The Blues tell the story of life's difficulties, and if you think for a moment, you will realize that they take the hardest realities of life and put them into music, only to come out with some new hope or sense of triumph. — Martin Luther King, Jr.

I'm John Lee Hooker in the sense that he was a blues man and he played blues his whole life. I'm a rock guy and I'm going to play rock music my whole life. — Sammy Hagar

I've been singing my whole life, since I was a kid; but never formally as a career. I did it in plays when I was younger, and I sang all styles of music: everything from Italian opera to blues. — Brittany Murphy

These is old blues / and I sing em like any woman do. / These the old blues / and I sing em, sing em, sing em. Just like any woman do. / My life ain't done yet. / Naw. My song ain't through. — Sherley Anne Williams

Awesome Quotes

Less is more. Simplicity is awesome. That's all you need in life. Its just my personal philosophy. — G-Eazy

Different people are afforded different opportunities. I've been given some awesome opportunities, and I feel that I've always knocked them out of the park. But I've always been scaled back after that. — CM Punk

Once you choose hope, anything's possible — Christopher Reeve

Blues music quote A real leader faces the music, even when he doesn't like the tune.
A real leader faces the music, even when he doesn't like the tune.

Encouragement is awesome. Think about it. It has the capacity to lift a man's or a woman's shoulders. To breathe fresh air into the fading embers of a smoldering dream. To actually change the course of another human being's day, week, or life. — Charles R. Swindoll

Get the fundamentals down and the level of everything you do will rise — Michael Jordan

Vice were the first company to say 'we know exactly what you do, we think it's awesome, and we want you to do more of it. — Tim Pool

Blues music quote Art is how we decorate space; Music is how we decorate time.
Art is how we decorate space; Music is how we decorate time.

There is a God of awesome grace who meets his children in moments of darkness and difficulty. He is worth running to. He is worth waiting for. He brings rest when it seems like there is no rest to be found. — Paul David Tripp

Making the simple complicated is commonplace, Charles Mingus once said. Making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity. — Rick Rubin

Waffles аrе јust awesome bread. — John Green

Creativity is more than just being different. Anybody can plan weird; that's easy. What's hard is to be as simple as Bach. Making the simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity. — Charles Mingus

Jazz And Blues Quotes

My baby lives in shades of blue, blue eyes and jazz and attitude. - Lana Del Rey

My baby lives in shades of blue, blue eyes and jazz and attitude. — Lana Del Rey

I wanna show that gospel, country, blues, rhythm and blues, jazz, rock 'n' roll are all just really one thing. Those are the American music and that is the American culture. — Etta James

My father's rich, my momma's good looking. Right? And I can play the Blues. I've never suffered and don't intend to suffer. — Miles Davis

Blues music quote A painter paints pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence.
A painter paints pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence.

When I die, I want them to play The Black and Crazy Blues, I want to be cremated, put in a bag of pot and I want beautiful people to smoke me and hope they got something out of it. — Rahsaan Roland Kirk

I like a very dark house, just black. I sit there and just think. Once I'm still and quiet inside, I'll begin. It's very personal; it has to be. One song may be Bach, the next blues, a song from TV, or a nursery rhyme or jazz piece. — Bobby McFerrin

It occurred to me by intuition, and music was the driving force behind that intuition. My discovery was the result of musical perception. — Albert Einstein

Blues music quote People are like Music, some speak the truth and other are just noise
People are like Music, some speak the truth and other are just noise

As far as I'm concerned, blues and jazz are the great American contributions to music. — Edgar Winter

I listened to classical guitar and Spanish guitar, as well as jazz guitar players, rock and roll and blues. All of it. I did the same thing with my voice. — Boz Scaggs

I joined Count Basie's band to make a little money and to see the world. For two years I didn't see anything but the inside of a Blue Goose bus, and I never got to send home a quarter. — Billie Holiday

People were saying that Southern folk song was dead, that the land that had produced American jazz, the blues, the spirituals, the mountain ballads and the work songs had gone sterile. — Alan Lomax

Rhythm And Blues Quotes

It used to be called boogie-woogie, it used to be called blues, used to be called rhythm and blues...It's called rock now. — Chuck Berry

When you sit down and think about what rock 'n' roll music really is, then you have to change that question. Played up-tempo, you call it rock 'n' roll; at a regular tempo, you call it rhythm and blues. — Little Richard

Rock ’n roll is really swing with a modern name. It began on the levees and plantations, took in folk songs, and features blues and rhythm. It's the rhythm that gets to the kids – they're starved of music they can dance to, after all those years of crooners. — Alan Freed

Blues music quote Music is the emotional life of most people.
Music is the emotional life of most people.

I love Ruth Brown, not just her singing, but Ruth Brown has more girl power than anyone, because she fought hard against people who ripped her off and then helped other artists through the Rhythm and Blues Foundation. — Ronnie Spector

Rock'n'roll is nothing but Boogie Woogie with stuff on top of it. And if you're black, they name it rhythm'n'blues, and if you're white, they name it rock'n'roll. So, I don't give a... You know. — Ike Turner

I invented the colors of the vowels!--A black, E white, I red, O blue, U green--I made rules for the form and movement of each consonant, and, and with instinctive rhythms, I flattered myself that I had created a poetic language accessible, some day, to all the senses. — Arthur Rimbaud

Blues music quote One good thing about music. When it hits you, you feel no pain.
One good thing about music. When it hits you, you feel no pain.

Rhythm and blues used to be called race music. ... This music was going on for years, but nobody paid any attention to it. — Ray Charles

We write to expose the unexposed. If there is one door in the castle you have been told not to go through, you must. The writer's job is to turn the unspeakable into words - not just into any words, but if we can, into rhythm and blues. — Anne Lamott

My brother Alex fell in love with rhythm and blues early and gave me a strong dose of it. — James Taylor

Our repertoire consisted of rhythm and blues, sort of country rhythm and blues, Sonny Terry things. — Ray Davies

Chicago Blues Quotes

Since I was a kid, I've had an absolute obsession with particular kinds of American music. Mississippi Delta blues of the Thirties, Chicago blues of the Fifties, West Coast music of the mid-Sixties - but I'd never really touched on dark Americana. — Robert Plant

And I come here as a daughter, raised on the South Side of Chicago - by a father who was a blue-collar city worker and a mother who stayed at home with my brother and me. — Michelle Obama

I love songs, and I love songwriting, and there's a standard of songwriting within Chicago blues in particular. I don't like the sad blues, necessarily; the Chicago blues is what I like, which is the kind of blues you can dance to. — Sinead O'Connor

Blues music quote Without music, life would be a mistake.
Without music, life would be a mistake.

For me, jazz, R&B, jump swing, Chicago blues, country blues, early hillbilly music, and honky tonk all stem from the same source — Duke Robillard

It was Muddy Waters who took the Delta blues north to Chicago, electrified the sound, and changed the course of popular music as we know it. That's pretty much the judgment of history, and it is mine as well. — Tim Cahill

There's no way in the world I can feel the same blues the way I used to. When I play in Chicago, I'm playing up-to-date, not the blues I was born with. People should hear the pure blues - the blues we used to have when we had no money. — Muddy Waters

Blues music quote One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain
One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain

When I think about a Chicago sound, I think about the Great Migration from the South. Many of Chicago's black artists are from Mississippi, Arkansas, and with them was brought blues and gospel music. — Rhymefest

R&B is everything. Hip Hop, Soul, Gospel and Classical Blues are everything. All of that makes sense in BJ The Chicago Kid and what we do. — B.J. The Chicago Kid

I listen to, like, funky Chicago blues. I love blues, but I love the funky, happy blues. There's a song about pretty much everything, including kidney stones, believe it or not. So there's something there for whatever you happen to be suffering, you know? — Sinead O'Connor

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

Singing The Blues Quotes

Be like the bluebird who never is blue, For he knows from his upbringing what singing can do — Cole Porter

I think a guy who's had just the right amount of booze can sing the blues a hell of a lot better than a guy who is stone sober. — Charlie Rich

A lot of people think the blues is depressing but that's not the blues I'm singing. When I'm singing blues, I singing life. People can't stand to listen to the blues, they've got to be phonies. — Etta James

Gospel songs are the songs of hope. When you sing gospel you have the feeling there is a cure for what's wrong, but when you are through with the blues, you've got nothing to rest on. — Mahalia Jackson

The harmonica is the most voice-like instrument, you can make it wail, feel happy, or cry. It's like singing the blues without words. — Charlie Musselwhite

I sing God's music because it makes me feel free. It gives me hope. With the blues, when you finish, you still have the blues. — Mahalia Jackson

The air is like a butterfly With frail blue wings. The happy earth looks at the sky And sings. — Joyce Kilmer

And then I think we realized, like any young guys, that blues are not learned in a monastery. You've got to go out there and get your heart broke and then come back and then you can sing the blues. — Keith Richards

When I'm singing the blues, I'm singing life. — Etta James

There was one emotional outlet my people always had when they had the blues. That was singing. — Ethel Waters

Jazz Music Quotes

To play without passion is inexcusable! — Ludwig van Beethoven

Music is enough for a lifetime - but a lifetime is not enough for music. - Sergei Rachmaninoff

Music is enough for a lifetime - but a lifetime is not enough for music. — Sergei Rachmaninoff

Technically, I'm not a guitar player, all I play is truth and emotion. — Jimi Hendrix

My music is the spiritual expression of what I am — my faith, my knowledge, my being...When you begin to see the possibilities of music, you desire to do something really good for people, to help humanity free itself from its hangups...I want to speak to their souls. — John Coltrane

My music is the spiritual expression of what I am: my faith, my knowledge, my being. — John Coltrane

Starting in the middle of a musical sentence and moving in both directions at once. — John Coltrane

I say, play your own way. Don't play what the public want - you play what you want and let the public pick up on what you doing - even if it does take them fifteen, twenty years. — Thelonious Monk

Jazz is not just music, it's a way of life, it's a way of being, a way of thinking. — Nina Simone

There are two kinds of music. Good music, and the other kind. — Duke Ellington

There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the US, and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz and swing, result from marijuana usage. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others. — Harry J. Anslinger

Bluegrass Quotes

Bluegrass is really a big part of my background. - Travis Tritt

Bluegrass is really a big part of my background. — Travis Tritt

Bluegrass has brought more people together and made more friends than any music in the world. You meet people at festivals and renew acquaintances year after year. — Bill Monroe

It seems like bluegrass people have more great stories to tell than other musicians — Dan Fogelberg

I hope you came out to hear some bluegrass music. If you didn't, we're both in the wrong place. — Ricky Skaggs

When you're a kid, you listen to what your family is listening to. For my family, it was bluegrass. — Sara Watkins

It was around that time, early 60s. There were like three kindred spirits in New Jersey. I had two friends who played folk music, old-time music and bluegrass and we started a little band called the Garret Mountain Boys. — David Grisman

I wanted to use some kind of name so people would know where I was from. So I took the name "bluegrass." There is not a prettier name in the whole world. — Bill Monroe

The local music community here was dying for a place to record, so we started doing acoustic, folk and bluegrass and then did rock projects for other bands, as well as for my son Tal and my own work. — Randy Bachman

Bluegrass is wonderful music. I'm glad I originated it. — Bill Monroe

I used to listen to country and western and blues, John Lee Hooker, spirituals, the Bluegrass Boys, and Eddie Arnold. There was a radio station that come on everyday with country, spirituals, and the blues. — Otis Rush

Rock And Roll Music Quotes

A kid once said to me "Do you get hangovers?" I said, "To get hangovers you have to stop drinking. — Lemmy Kilmister

Rock and roll is about having a good time, so no matter where you are right now blast some music and forget about lifes problems. — Andy Biersack

It's gotta be rock and roll music, if you wanna dance with me. - Chuck Berry

It's gotta be rock and roll music, if you wanna dance with me. — Chuck Berry

When I was a kid, I was told rock n' roll wasn't music. It wasn't art. Queen was my proof, my evidence, that these people were wrong - and they meant everything to me. — Axl Rose

Rock and roll music - the music of freedom frightens people and unleashes all manner of conservative defense mechanisms. — Salman Rushdie

Rock music is important to people , because it allows them to escape this crazy world. It allows them not to run away from the problems that are there, but to face up to them , but at the same time sort of DANCE ALL OVER THEM. That's what rock and roll is about. — Pete Townshend

The music I like to play is Rock 'N Roll. I like to rock like a wild animal. I like to rock it well enough to whip a yak's ass. I love to rock it good on a horse's ass. I like to rock it real hard. I love to rock it all the way to Russia. I like to kick out the Jazz and kick it out all the way. — Wesley Willis

Remember when you used to watch TV in the Sixties and you'd see Perry Como in a cashmere sweater? That's what rock 'n' roll is becoming. It's your parents' music. — Neil Young

Rock and roll by its nature is sexual. So girls playing rock and roll is saying to the world, "We own our sexuality." I think that pop music is sort of about "you can do what you want to me" kind of energy, while rock and roll is "I'm going to do what I want to you" kind of energy. — Joan Jett

Rock and roll is a music, and why should a music contribute to ... juvenile delinquency? If people are going to be juvenile delinquents, they're going to be delinquents if they hear ... Mother Goose rhymes. — Elvis Presley

People Writing About Blues Music

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Read quotes by Billy Gibbons

Billy Gibbons
quotes on life, music and love

38 366
Read quotes by Muddy Waters

Muddy Waters
quotes on life, education and love

40 398
Read quotes by Willie Dixon

Willie Dixon
quotes on life, music and love

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Read quotes by Wynton Marsalis

Wynton Marsalis
quotes on education, music and love

124 433
Read quotes by Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen
quotes on success, love and life

411 1776
Read quotes by Luther Allison

Luther Allison
quotes on life, love and world

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More Blues Music Quotes

Music means communication to me. I say 'listen you people out there, listen to my music, let's be one.' Music is a friend to me when I am lonely, when I am blue. You can't define music 'cause music is cosmos and it knows no barrier or definition. You have to feel music to dig it. — Robert Plant

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. — Willie Dixon

With the White Stripes we were trying to trick people into not realising we were playing the blues. We did not want to come off like white kids trying to play black music from 100 years ago so a great way to distract them was by dressing in red, white and black. — Jack White

I find Indian music very funky. I mean it's very soulful, with their own kind of blues. But it's the only other school on the planet that develops improvisation to the high degree that you find in jazz music. So we have a lot of common ground. — John McLaughlin

It seems all worlds of music - rock, blues, R&B, soul, hip-hop and others - are able to point to impromptu get-togethers as proud moments in their timelines, encounters that were recorded and created music of lasting impression. In the jazz tradition, there are a few, but none that has been revered for as long as Jazz at Massey Hall. — Ashley Kahn

The consolidation of the music business has made it difficult to encourage styles like the blues, all of which deserve to be celebrated as part of our most treasured national resources. — Bonnie Raitt

My idea of heaven is a place where the Tyne meets the Delta, where folk music meets the blues. — Mark Knopfler

Once I was checking to hotel and a couple saw my ring with Blues on it. They said, 'You play blues. That music is so sad.' I gave them tickets to the show, and they came up afterwards and said, 'You didn't play one sad song.' — Buddy Guy

The touch of an infinite mystery passes over the trivial and the familiar, making it break out into ineffable music... The trees, the stars, and the blue hills ache with a meaning which can never be uttered in words. — Rabindranath Tagore

Blues musicians don't retire. They drop. — Buddy Guy

The blues ain't nothing but a good man feelin' bad. — Leon Redbone

I want to make a picture that could stand on its own, regardless of what it was a picture of. I've never been a bit interested in the fact that this was a picture of a blues musician or a street corner or something. — William Eggleston

Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. — Charlie Parker

Music is not written in red, white and blue. It is written in the heart's blood of the composer. — Nellie Melba

The blues is an art of ambiguity, an assertion of the irrepressibly human over all circumstances, whether created by others or by one's own human failing. — Ralph Ellison

In high school I was best in music class on the trumpet, but the prizes went to the boys with blue eyes. I made up my mind to outdo anybody white on my horn. — Miles Davis

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