Singing The Blues Quotes

When I'm singing the blues, I'm singing life.

See, that's nothing but blues, that's all I'm singing about. It's today's blues.

Anybody singing the blues is in a deep pit yelling for help.

Audiences like their blues singers to be miserable.

Jazz took too much discipline. You have to come in at the right place, which is different than me singing the blues, where I can sing, 'Oh, baby,' if there's a pause in the melody. With jazz, you better leave that space open, or put in something real cool.

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.

My uncle was 16, in junior high, and he heard me singing and snatched me off the stage. I thought he was happy and was going to pat me on the head and say I was good. But he took me home and told my grandmother this youngin' was at school singing the blues.

If you look at the other singers of Billie Holiday's time, they were really trying to entertain. They were trying to make people feel good. They were singing fast - and she was singing the blues.

God, I'm just a fat bald guy, 60 years old, singing the blues, you know?

Blues is easy to play, but hard to feel.

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.

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

I never, with my eyes, saw the mistreatment of any black person. Not once. Where we lived was all farmers. The blacks worked for the farmers. I hoed cotton with them. I'm with the blacks, because we're white trash. We're going across the field.... They're singing and happy. I never heard one of them, one black person, say, I tell you what: These doggone white people - not a word!... Pre-entitlement, pre-welfare, you say: Were they happy? They were godly; they were happy; no one was singing the blues.

Nobody leaves this place without singing the blues.