Ralph Ellison Quotes

I think blues music is music of the soul. Of course, there are other forms. You could call some classical music blues music in that way.

The blues is an art of ambiguity, an assertion of the irrepressibly human over all circumstances, whether created by others or by one's own human failing.

The blues? Why, the blues are a part of me. They're like a chant. The blues are like spirituals, almost sacred. When we sing blues, we're singing out our hearts, we're singing out our feelings. Maybe we're hurt and just can't answer back, then we sing or maybe even hum the blues. When I sing, 'I walk the floor, wring my hands and cry -- Yes, I walk the floor, wring my hands and cry,'... what I'm doing is letting my soul out.

For a while I had a blues band in L.A., but I realized I was too optimistic to play the blues. I did not have the misery in my heart that the blues required.

The blues tells a story. Every line of the blues has a meaning.

I've always loved the blues, ever since I was a kid. It has a depth to it that a lot of contemporary music doesn't have. It has pain and suffering in it, but funny stories, too. And it is built on storytelling, which is something I really love.

You cannot have black music without something soulful in it, whether it's lyrically, how it's performed, or how it's expressed.

I'm a bluesman moving through a blues-soaked America, a blues-soaked world, a planet where catastrophe and celebration... "Joy and Pain" - sit side by side. The blues started off in some field, in some plantation, in some mind, in some imagination, in some heart. The blues blew over to the next plantation, and then the next state. The blues went south to north, got electrified and even sanctified. The blues got mixed up with jazz and gospel and rock and roll.

The blues are just a heightened sense of awareness of life's ups and downs, and things that a guy sees after a couple hits of Jack Daniels.

When I'm singing the blues, I'm singing life.

The blues is also existential and offers a sense of mature reflection that enabled it to be the leitmotif of modern life.

Most blues don't have a beginning, middle, or end. You just cut a couple slices of blues.

I listen to blues music a lot and that's a good person feeling bad and celebrating that pain by releasing it in that kind of joyous fashion.

The blues to me is like being very sad, very sick, going to church, being very happy ... it's sort of a mixed up thing. You just have to feel it.

Blues is a very physical music.

My idols are singers like Billie Holiday and Erykah Badu because there's no gloss on what they do.

I'm a blues guy at heart, so silly music isn't generally what I do. I'm a I'll-cry-as-my-guitar-gently-weeps kind of guy.

People think the blues is sad. They hear people moaning and such. That's not the blues. That's just somebody singing slow...The blues is about truth-telling.

And as long as people have problems, the blues can never die.

I can still write blues songs because I remember everything.

No matter what you got, the blues is there

Blues had the pulse beat of the people who keep on going.

I don't think I ever sing the same way twice. The blues is sort of a mixed-up thing. You just have to feel it. Anything I do sing is part of my life.

If you look at the other singers of Billie Holiday's time, they were really trying to entertain. They were trying to make people feel good. They were singing fast - and she was singing the blues.

I wanted to know everything about the blues. I think it constantly changes for me.