Blues Quotes
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I don't try to just be a blues singer – I try to be an entertainer. That has kept me going.
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Blues are the songs of despair, but gospel songs are the songs of hope.
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This be an empty world without the blues.
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White folks hear the blues come out, but they don't know how it got there.
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I will sing happy songs, and I do sing happy songs, but the stuff that's going to move me and going to make me close my eyes is always the blues.
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Popular music has always been rooted in the blues, whether it's Adele or Led Zeppelin or Sam Cooke. It's just the beat that changes.
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Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil wrote a lot of stuff for Phil Spector... we had done all rock and roll and rhythm and blues. I mean, we liked ballads and I suppose we did them OK, but that wasn't where we were emotionally and musically coming from.
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My mum's family would all get together, with guitars, harmonica, mandolins and upright bass and play old blues and folk songs. That was normal to me.
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So yeah, I am definitely a blues man at heart.
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I can show you that I have played with just about every jazz musician, every African musician, every blues musician. It's not like I'm cashing in on a false concept. This is what I do.
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I was always taught that Latin, Caribbean people were cousins to me, as well as blues was a cousin to me, as well as Africans were direct relatives to me. It was all a part of my language.
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I was real into Devo, Pavement, Captain Beefheart, and the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion.
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When the slaves left Africa, they left us this music. They left us blues.
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The blues was bleeding the same blood as me.
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I always loved Sam Cooke, because he seemed very versatile. He sang gospel, soul, blues, pop music.
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I went back to Belfast and started a club, the Maritime. No one had thought about doing a blues club, so I was the first.
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When you think blues, you think BB King. Even a young kid can look at a picture of BB King and say, 'the blues.' The man is more than a musician. He's a monument.
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That's what Tina Turner did, too - sang blues up-tempo - and they called it rock 'n' roll.
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I base myself in African-derived music. Blues is one of the modern forms of African music.
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Remember what I told you about the blues? If you're not risking nothing, neither would they.
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I think every once in a while country has lost its way, but found its way back. It's always going to drift away from the traditional side, but then find a way to return. There's room for all kinds of influences be it pop, blues, gospel or whatever. But I will always say that I think we need more traditional country music coming down the pike.
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I don't think of myself as a folk singer per se, but I really like blues and string-band music. When I started listening to records when I was a teenager, the folk boom was going on.
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The blues is played everywhere. There's no place I've been where they don't have blues or aren't interested in blues.
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I've always loved soul, R&B, doo-wop and blues, and I've wanted to make a record like that for years.
