Blues Quotes

Most popular blues quotes

They've laughed to shield their crying
then shuffled though the dreams
and stepped 'n fetched a country
to write the blues with screams. - Maya Angelou quote.
They've laughed to shield their crying
then shuffled though the dreams
and stepped 'n fetched a country
to write the blues with screams.
There are all different shades of blues.
Rock is like a battery that must always go back to blues to get recharged.
Eric Clapton Small Talk, Big Names: 40 Years of Rock Quotes

rock & roll

As a form, the blues is an autobiographical chronicle of personal catastrophe expressed lyrically. - Ralph Ellison quote.
As a form, the blues is an autobiographical chronicle of personal catastrophe expressed lyrically.
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 failings. - Ralph Ellison quote.
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 failings.
In its origin, modern blues music is the expression of the emotional life of a race. - W. C. Handy quote.
In its origin, modern blues music is the expression of the emotional life of a race.
The blues came from the man farthest down.  The blues came from nothingness, from want, from desire.  And when a man sang or played the blues, a small part of the want was satisfied. - W. C. Handy quote.
The blues came from the man farthest down.  The blues came from nothingness, from want, from desire.  And when a man sang or played the blues, a small part of the want was satisfied.
That's how the blues emerged, by the way—
Our spirits needed a way to dance through the heavy mess.
The music, a sack that carries the bone of those left alongside
The trail of tears when we were forced
To leave everything we knew by the way. - Joy Harjo quote.
That's how the blues emerged, by the way—
Our spirits needed a way to dance through the heavy mess.
The music, a sack that carries the bone of those left alongside
The trail of tears when we were forced
To leave everything we knew by the way.
In a deep song voice with a melancholy tone
I heard that Negro sing, that old piano moan. - Langston Hughes quote.
In a deep song voice with a melancholy tone
I heard that Negro sing, that old piano moan.
When we sing the blues, we're singing out our hearts, we're singing out our feelings.  Maybe we're hurt and just can't answer back, then we sing or maybe even hum the blues. - Zora Neale Hurston quote.
When we sing the blues, we're singing out our hearts, we're singing out our feelings.  Maybe we're hurt and just can't answer back, then we sing or maybe even hum the blues.
The person who sings only the blues is like someone in a deep pit yelling for help. - Mahalia Jackson quote.
The person who sings only the blues is like someone in a deep pit yelling for help.
The blues slows you down and gives you time to think.
Being a blues singer is like being black two times. - B. B. King quote.
Being a blues singer is like being black two times.

musicians singing

The blues was like that problem child that you may have had in the family.  You was a little bit ashamed to let anybody see him, but you loved him.  You just didn't know how other people would take it. - B. B. King quote.
The blues was like that problem child that you may have had in the family.  You was a little bit ashamed to let anybody see him, but you loved him.  You just didn't know how other people would take it.
Good mornin' blues, how do you do?
I'm doin' alright this mornin', how are you?
The spirituals and the blues were not created out of sweet deceit.  Spirituals and blues contain sublimated bitterness and humility, pathos and bewilderment.
Blues is to jazz what yeast is to bread—without it, it's flat.
The Blues Had a Baby and the World Called it Rock and Roll.

rock & roll

We today have the blues, too, but it is a blues of our day.  It's more of the mind and heart and not of the beating of the back.
White folks don't understand the blues.  They hear it come out, but they don't know how it got there.