I've always tried to defend the idea that the blues doesn't have to be sung by a person who comes from Mississippi, as I did.
I was living and working with adult men who were playing a real art form. And I had been playing blues all my life. As soon as I formed my first band, we played Jimmy Reed stuff. So it wasn't like I was a white kid who was learning the blues from B.B. King records.
We are trying to prove that the blues lives on forever and anybody in this place can sing the blues.
Blues is like American Express. I don't leave home without it.
The blues are the roots and the other musics are the fruits
I probably owe as much to Jeff Beck as I do to Son House with connections to the blues.
You've heard me call myself a bluesman and a blues singer. I call myself a blues singer, but you ain't never heard me call myself a blues guitar man. Well, that's because there's been so many can do it better'n I can, play the blues better'n me. I think a lot of them have told me things, taught me things.
I'm a bluesman, which means that I put an emphasis on the minor keys.
Audiences like their blues singers to be miserable.
It's never hard to sing the blues. Everyone in the world has the blues . . .
The blues are the roots and the other musics are the fruits. It's better keeping the roots alive, because it means better fruits from now on. The blues are the roots of all American music. As long as American music survives, so will the blues.
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.
I'm sort of standing on T-Bone Walker's shoulders, Les Paul's shoulders, Lightnin' Hopkins' shoulders, Muddy Waters' shoulders, you know? And if I've inspired other people, I'm pleased. That pleases me greatly.
A lot of what I listened to growing up was blues, but also folk and indie music. So there's this marriage of songs that structurally are quite bluesy. Sound-wise, there's a lot of indie as well. But you can't really say I'm pop-blues, because that's insulting to blues. It just can't exist.
People, whether they know it or not, like their blues singers miserable. They like their blues singers to die afterwards.
Janis Joplin sings the blues as hard as any black person.
I do not claim any of the creation of the blues, although I have written many of them even before Mr. Handy had any blues published. I heard them when I was knee-high to a duck.
Ever since I was a little kid and first heard Jimmy Reed's 'Honey, Don't Let Me Go,' the blues has been in my blood.
I wouldn't count myself as being a true blues guitarist because I feel you have to live it.
I always have a little bit of Brazil and New Orleans in my band.
The blues have always had some of the best times, best feelings I’ve ever had.
I haven't lost my blues roots.
When all the original blues guys are gone, you start to realize that someone has to tend to the tradition. I recognize that I have some responsibility to keep the music alive, and it's a pretty honorable position to be in.
Blues players are around for 50 years, and that's just fine.
Blues musicians don't retire. They drop.
