Anthony Braxton Quotes

The Beatles and The Stones were basically inspired by American Rhythm and Blues.

Many cities make music, but no city breathes music quite like Memphis. The songs and sounds that come from here are uniquely American.

The whole American pop culture started in Philadelphia with 'American Bandstand' and the music that came out of that city.

I'm a fan of all music, and probably my first - well, not the very first music I listened to, but back in the late fifties, when I first started hearing rock & roll, it was definitely tinged with doo wop and also Elvis and all those great songs.

I never liked jazz or anything else. Early rock n' roll - that was music to me. Everything else was boring.

I grew up in the 1950s at the beginning of rock n' roll, and would strum a tennis racket in front of the mirror.

I was into playing American music, especially the blues.

We're a gumbo of American music, and aren't ashamed to play pop or soul or rock because we all grew up on radio.

I want to make music that somehow connects to the things that I love in America music.

Elvis Presley's music never meant anything to me. Mambo was the music I loved - it spoke to me.

I didn't like any British music before The Beatles. For me, it was all about black American music. But then I became a successful pop singer, even though the kind of music I liked was more elitist, which is what I'm trying to get back to.

There was always a lot of American music in England until, obviously when the Beatles came around, then there was a shift towards English music, but before then American music was the main thing.

Elvis Presley, The Everly Brothers, and a lot of American artists were my greatest influences.

The groups, though, were my inspiration way back then. I liked Frankie Lyman and the Teenagers.

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

Back then, I, most rockers loved Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis... you know in the '60s.

Doo-wop is the true music to me, man. Doo-wop was what nurtured me and grew me into who I am, and I guess even when I was in school, the teacher probably thought I had ADD or something every day, because I'd be beating on the desks, singing like the Flamingos or the Spaniels or Clyde McPhatter or somebody.

Guys like Clyde McPhatter used to sing their tail ends off!

I was growing up at a time when music was growing and changing so fast. I had learned all the big band sounds of the 1940s, Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey. But then along came Chuck Berry, Les Paul, Fats Domino and I figured out how to make their music as well.

I always liked jazz. And my people liked the old blues, race records and the doo-wop and all that.

We couldn't get enough of American rock 'n' roll. We'd hear it when we played American air bases in the U.K.

We'd play the American bases and found all these wonderful records by Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Fats Domino, Sam Cooke. Without American music, there would not have been a British Invasion.

When I first went out on the road with Larry Williams, there was also, like, The Coasters, The Drifters, and The Flamingos.

I met all my heroes on the oldies circuit: Gary U.S. Bonds, Lloyd Price, Little Richard.

I came in after the Smokey Robinsons, Temptations, Clovers, and Clyde McPhatter and the Drifters. I came along at that level, when there was harmonizing.