Music Pioneers Quotes

Loretta Lynn, Tammy Wynette, Dolly Parton and I were the first female headliners, where we would book our own opening acts. Before that, it was a standing joke that it was more like we had 'pretty little girl singers' opening for a male headliner.

Without Elvis none of us could have made it.

We came along at a time when people were really focused on music. We were part of the second generation of bands after all of those great 60's bands when rock was still in its' infancy.

People have had the idea to do a '90s alternative tour for a long time. I didn't come up with that; I was the first guy to basically say it was time.

When I lived in Nashville, Tanya Tucker and people like that were coming up, and I'm sure that Loretta Lynn and Tammy Wynette were going, 'What's that noise? That's not country.' It's always been this battle where whoever comes up behind the reigning stars isn't country enough. There really is a lot more crossover now.

People looked at me - people still look at me - as 'this is Gucci Mane's producer.' But the music that me and Future put together was so different than what me and Gucci do, it just made people look at the music like, 'Hold on - Zaytoven is the real deal.'

Guys like Future and me, we help create and shape the sound of music - not just Atlanta music, but music all over. If you really pay attention to the music being made, a lot of that is very heavily influenced by the stuff that we created. I listen to so many songs that's like, 'Damn, this sounds like my music!'

I hear a lot of influence from me and Timbaland's whole sound in a lot of records of today. But if you have classics like that, then I'm sure you gotta expect that it's gonna influence some people. So, I'm fine with that.

Where Charlie Christian left off, Papoose started a new thing; he was an innovator of the guitar. The things he did during his recording career with Fats Domino in the Fifties and Sixties until the day he died was as much a part of the music of New Orleans as anybody else has had to offer.

If it hadn't been for record people like Ralph Peer, the Chess brothers, and Alan Lomax, then life would've been unbelievably dull, and I would've been sacking groceries somewhere and probably, at this point, running a little 7-Eleven down by the airport.

Dylan's relationship with Johnny Cash was the biggest influence on Nashville in my lifetime - they opened up country music.

When you talk about *NSYNC or Backstreet Boys - we were like the New Kids, and New Kids were like the Bee Gees. But Girl Radical will be the first ones, and that's a crazy idea. That's what got us so excited.

Seattle very much benefited from this geography where it was a town nobody had really heard of in terms of a music scene. So we had that factor of being a new discovery.

None of the jazz greats made music for the purpose of you going to check out music before them. Michael Jackson didn't make music so you could go check out Sam Cooke.

More than anybody in the music industry, the Staple Singers were like family to me.

In 1994, we had the first record by a true heavy metal band to ever hit the Billboard top No. 1 slot. We paved the way. And we always waved the heavy metal flag.

Ain't nobody more punk rock than Robert Johnson, Lead Belly, even Little Richard.

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.

It's a younger generation running the show, and I miss the generation we had in the '70s. They were really very honorable guys, like Neal Bogart and Bill Graham, people who will never be around again.

R. Kelly is one of the pioneers that I grew up listening to. If he's classified as an R&B artist, then I want to be like that. I don't want to have limits either.

When I was studying... there weren't any black concert pianists. My choices were intuitive, and I had the technique to do it. People have heard my music and heard the classic in it, so I have become known as a black classical pianist.

I listen to a lot of artists like Tori Amos, Cherry Glazerr, and Patti Smith, and I kind of wanted to follow in their footsteps, or at least try to be that genre-defining.

I would like to see more airplay for all artists, no matter what age. I think there's a lot of money being spent toward the young guys, but a lot of the older guys are the ones who blazed the trail for those young guys.

But with country trap, I in no way want to take credit for that. I believe Young Thug would be one of the biggest pioneers in that.

Lonnie Donegan and the folk movement were responsible for a lot of the spread of the blues in England. The group Them with Van Morrison was a big influence on me, too, as were The Stones; The Yardbirds, John Mayall, and the other British blues pioneers.