Jimmy Reid Quotes

What I'm doing is basically the same as Bob Dylan did with folk songs and Woody Guthrie songs, the same as folk music's always done. I'm not going to sing about ploughing, but I'll write a song that sounds like it should be about ploughing.

I'd like to be remembered as a keeper of the flame who kept traditional music alive, because I've been doing that twice as long as I was in the Byrds.

One cannot imagine Scots music and song without the contribution of Burns.

We have to let the younger generations take our music - and approach it the way they want - but just teach them where it all comes from.

A lot of people don't realise I came out of the Smoky Mountains with a load of songs.

There are a whole lot of Carter Family songs.

Celtic music is part of the language in Scotland and Ireland, where every kid and grandparent knows those songs, music by the likes of Woody Guthrie and Hank Snow is getting entrenched here. They are part of our cultural language. It's part of a living treasure. It doesn't just belong to a museum.

A lot of Woody Guthrie's songs were taken from other songs. He would rework the melody and lyrics, and all of a sudden it was a Woody Guthrie song.

It's really important to me that the songs not only stand out individually but work as a full body of work, too.

If New Orleans is allowed to die, a crucial part of the world's music heritage will disappear.

I'm not suggesting our music is the only music, but I am suggesting that there are certain elements in America's culture that are so precious that it would be a shame for them to go down the drain.

I am a fan of today's sound as long as we don't get too slick, and yet I am very reverent of my roots.

My mom was a folk singer and Celtic harpist. My dad was in a barbershop quartet and my great grandma was an opera singer. As I grew up, I discovered pop music and Top 40 radio, but it was in the '90s, so music was very different then - it was really lyrical.

I love traditional music. But in any culture around the world, there is the historic and cultural music and everything that's been passed down and passed down, and hopefully you take that, and then you take it, you know, the next distance, and then somebody else takes it the next distance.

I probably belong to a type of composer of songs who keeps thinking about melody... I am old fashioned.

I always say that I am very proud of the work that I did with the Rolling Stones and that I am also proud of what I have done with the Rhythm Kings.

We teach young kids from 8 to 14 or 15 about their musical heritage through great songs written by American songwriters. We don't do too many modern composers, although we include songs from Billy Joel and other writers like him.

A nation creates music. The composer only arranges it.

In blues music, there's a lot of borrowing, so it's often difficult to identify the originator of a song.

A lot of the songs in 'See Jane Sing!' are pulled straight from the kitchen table and my parents harmonizing together.

My favorite Bob Dylan record is the very first one where he sings one Bob Dylan song and the rest of them are his interpretations of the Dust Bowl-era folk songs, or even going back as far as the mass influx of people coming into the U.S. during the gold rush. His interpretations of those songs are incredible.

Music lives in my mother - she's played in bands in Detroit and toured and did the whole thing. So I have somebody who's done it all to just talk to. And we write songs together.

Music always lived with me, like a family tradition.

As a rock band, you're slightly one foot in the past, playing instruments like guitar, bass and drums.

My grandparents from the old country, Latvia, were all musical on my father's side.