Mose Allison Quotes

I've just always written songs in a style that appeal to me personally.

I was trying to establish an identity in music, and black and white had nothing to do with it.

I'm not committed to putting myself up for a blues guitarist, even though I love playing the blues.

I don't sing white; I don't sing black - I sing Bronx. When I sing 'Ruby Baby,' I'm rolling like Jimmy Reed. I wanted to communicate like Hank Williams and groove like Jimmy Reed.

I've always really been a big fan of rock music. I wanted to record rock music when I was 14 or 15, but I was too young; it would have been ridiculous.

Country is and always will be my heart, but I don't have a problem with it spilling over into pop if it wants to.

The blues is an art of ambiguity, an assertion of the irrepressibly human over all circumstance whether created by others or by one's own human failings. They are the only consistent art in the United States which constantly remind us of our limitations while encouraging us to see how far we can actually go. When understood in their more profound implication, they are a corrective, an attempt to draw a line upon man's own limitless assertion.

I know my style of music is very eclectic.

Janis Joplin sings the blues as hard as any black person.

I don't actually personally get off on guitar music.

I think my music covers a broader sound than just 'Tropical House'... My goal is to simply be a great producer in my own right without being pigeonholed.

We don't want to categorize our music. Some people say you need a definite musical direction to give a group visibility.

I cut all my early records in Nashville, so I guess that makes me country. I call it country pop, but my love of the blues is in there, too.

I think everyone has such varied taste in music.

I know what my taste is, and I do like my touch on the piano.

I kept playing blues-based music all during the 1980s, and it was tough.

I always felt of myself as a composer, performer, improviser. I've never called myself a jazz man. I make art.

For me, I'm way more at home in heavy metal than I am in classical music.

I didn't want to be a soul singer.

I was living and working with adult men who were playing a real art form. And I had been playing blues all my life. As soon as I formed my first band, we played Jimmy Reed stuff. So it wasn't like I was a white kid who was learning the blues from B.B. King records.

I just like Kodak Black. I feel like he's pretty self-aware, even if I don't agree with all the things he says.

You can't control who likes you. If I got Backstreet Boy fans what am I supposed to do? Turn them away? Whoever likes my stuff, likes my stuff but just know Slim Shady is hip hop, I grew up on hip hop, it's the music I love and it's the music I respect. I respect the culture...that's me.

I've always had a great love for the blues.

Prince is extremely soulful, but he can get real rock-'n'-rollish. So can Lenny Kravitz. Lenny's real soulful but he's got that rock with him, too. On the whole, I guess black folks ain't trying to handle rock-'n'-roll, really.

When jazz is played in another nation, it is called American. When it is played in another country, it sounds false. Jazz is the result of the energy stored up in America.