Eric Clapton Quotes

I liked blues from the time my mother used to take me to church. I started to listen to gospel music, so I liked that. But I had an aunt at that time, my mother's aunt who bought records by people like Lonnie Johnson, Robert Johnson, Blind Lemon Jefferson, and a few others.

The blues is played everywhere. There's no place I've been where they don't have blues or aren't interested in blues.

I started on acoustic guitar after I heard Leadbelly and Big Bill Broonzy.

I stumbled into soul music at a very young age. It had something that really spoke to me.

From the spiritual came the blues, gospel, and rhythm-and-blues. I heard all of that music growing up, and that has influenced how I approached classical music. I'm sure of it.

A lot of my success comes from black music. It's something I'm very proud of.

It is from the blues that all that may be called American music derives its most distinctive character.

I grew up with a heavy diet of gospel, folk, and blues because those are kind of the cornerstones of traditional American music.

I loved Jimmy Reed, the chord changes, the lyrics.

I was just fascinated by the blues.

When I was a child, there was an old man who toured the villages with just a guitar. The first time I heard him singing Skip James songs, I thought he was singing in an African language.

My thought was I should try to stick with names that people may recognize like Robert Johnson, Son House, and Hoagy Carmichael, so if somebody cared to research, they would find a wealth of material.

Blues was made for the recessed.

I was into playing American music, especially the blues.

The blues. It runs through all American music. Somebody bending the note. The other is the two-beat groove. It's in New Orleans music, it's in jazz, it's in country music, it's in gospel.

The music that I listen to is very minimalistic. I listen to a lot of old blues that is just guitar and vocals.

I grew up listening to a lot of soul music, and a lot of folk music.

Quite frankly, I've always listened to the black side of the radio dial. Where I grew up, there was a lot of it and there was a lot of live music around.

Ninety-nine percent of the music that was of any interest to me when I was growing up came out of the black community.

I grew up listening to spiritual music, Blind Willie Johnson and folk.

People are going to wake up to this great reservoir of music we've created in America - cakewalks, one-steps, boogie-woogie, country and western. I had a bit to do with one of those traditions.

I play blues old-timey style.

A whole generation of young whites have involved themselves with traditional Negro music.

My favorite country blues player was Big Bill Broonzy. City blues was Freddie King, but I liked them all - Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Ralph Willis, Lonnie Johnson, Brownie McGhee and the three Kings, B.B., Albert and Freddie. Jazz-wise, I listened to Django, Barney Kessel and Wes Montgomery.

As far as I'm concerned, blues and jazz are the great American contributions to music.