Jimmy Rushing Quotes

I like the blues a lot. I grew up on it.

But what I like to sing mostly is blues and cabaret style.

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

I just like the blues better than rock 'n' roll.

I consider myself much more of a blues singer now.

Blues and jazz are such a root to music.

I grew up on the precursors to rock and roll, rhythm and blues.

I grew up listening to Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf and lots of blues, R&B and Motown.

I was never really that interested in the punk movement. I was a blues guy: I liked Motown, James Brown.

I grew up listening to a lot of soul music, which has probably informed the way that I sing on my tracks.

Man I mean, the great thing about playing clubs in Harlem is people have an appreciation not just for the music but for the history of the music.

I think somewhere in the back of my mind I've always wanted to make a whole swing album.

You play a 'lowdown dirty shame slow and lonesome, my mama dead, my papa across the sea I ain't dead but I'm just supposed to be' blues. You can take that same blues, make it uptempo, a shuffle blues, that's what rock n' roll did with it. So blues ain't going nowhere. Ain't goin' nowhere.

If I were to categorize what I sing, I have many different influences, and a lot of them are from back in time.

Americana Music is about all sorts of different music. It's very free and open: a world where people just like authentic music.

I still like to play the blues more than anything else.

When I was a kid, I used to listen to my Emerson radio late at night under the covers. I started by listening to jazz in the late 1940s and then vocal harmony groups like the Four Freshmen, the Modernaires and the Hi-Lo's. I loved Stan Kenton's big band - with those dark chords and musicians who could swing cool with individual sounds.

I didn't even respect singers until I heard Ray Charles, Frank Sinatra and Louis Armstrong.

When you sit down and think about what rock 'n' roll music really is, then you have to change that question. Played up-tempo, you call it rock 'n' roll; at a regular tempo, you call it rhythm and blues.

Our repertoire consisted of rhythm and blues, sort of country rhythm and blues, Sonny Terry things.

Because the blues is the basis of most American music in the 20th century. It's a 12-bar form that's played by jazz, bluegrass and country musicians. It has a rhythmic vocabulary that's been used by rock n' roll. It's related to spirituals, and even the American fiddle tradition.

I knelt at the altar of Ray Charles for years. I worked at a restaurant, and that's all there was on the jukebox.

I play blues old-timey style.

I really like Billie Holiday's husky voice, and I'd definitely like to find out more about her.

I've never been into the typical R&B voice, with runs and bluesy sounding words. That doesn't suit me.