Etta James Quotes

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.

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.

A lot of people think the blues is depressing but that's not the blues I'm singing. When I'm singing blues, I singing life. People can't stand to listen to the blues, they've got to be phonies.

When I'm going through something that has a big impact on my life, it's much easier to sing.

That specific remedy for the worldwide epidemic of depression is a gift called the blues.

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.

The blues is life itself.

As a comedian, you're kind of like a blues musician; you have to live a little bit.

Singing allowed me to express myself in ways that I wouldn't be able to do otherwise.

I realized I was tired of singing about trees and flowers. I wanted to sing about real life. From then on, nobody could tell me anything was better than blues.

I've always just had sort of a dark take on life, I suppose, and hopefully, the music transcends that in a way.

I didn't never have to go to a therapist. I just always put it in a song and you heard me.

People think you have to go through a lot of changes to become a soul singer, You just have to go through life.

Music is my way out. I keep things locked up and never say anything. I guess in order to say something to one person, I have to sing it to a couple of thousand. It doesn't make for healthy relationships.

You've got to sing from the depths of the heart. Without heart, you cannot be a Qawwal.

When I first started making music, it was where I went when I couldn't express myself, when I wasn't able to connect with other people, when I couldn't talk about what I was going through.

The one thing I loved about blues and soul was the way they taught the world how to express such deep feelings.

I was bookish and awkward and wanted a means of expressing the millions of emotions flying around inside me. The piano seemed as good an outlet as any.

There's so much stuff that you see every day that you want to talk about, but I'm not the type to open up, so the only way I could open up is through music.

Blues is a very physical music.

I think that I can't help but put my personal pain in my music because there's a lot of it. That's my therapy.

I never had the blues; the blues always had me.

My guitar and singing was my way of crying.

When I write, I tend toward melancholy, and the few times that I've tried pure joy in music, it doesn't really work that well. The joy can be through catharsis. I think that's what I do well, and observation.

Anytime a person can play the blues, he has a soul and he has a 'lift' to play anything else he wants to play. It's sort of like the foundation to a building.