Quotes on Blues Music

They teach you there's a boundary line to music. But, man, there's no boundary line to art.

It was as though we were a picture, trapped in time: this had been happening for hundreds of years, people sitting in a room, waiting for dinner, and listening to the blues.

Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn. They teach you there's a boundary line to music. But, man, there's no boundary line to art.

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.

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

The blues tells a story. Every line of the blues has a meaning.

Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom.

If you don't live it, it won't come out your horn.

We all have idols. Play like anyone you care about but try to be yourself while you're doing so.

White folks hear the blues come out, but they don't know how it got there.

But between sets I'd sneak over to the black places to hear blues musicians. It got to the point where I was making my living at white clubs and having my fun at the other places.

Simple music is the hardest music to play and blues is simple music.

Of course, there are a lot of ways you can treat the blues, but it will still be the blues.

My mother always told me, even if a song has been done a thousand times, you can still bring something of your own to it. I'd like to think I did that.