Rhythm And Blues Quotes

• Rhythm and blues used to be called race music. ... This music was going on for years, but nobody paid any attention to it.

  Ray Charles

  Race, Years, Attention

  "Show 55 - Crammer: A lively cram course on the history of rock and some other things". March 8, 1968.

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• When you sit down and think about what rock 'n' roll music really is, then you have to change that question. Played up-tempo, you call it rock 'n' roll; at a regular tempo, you call it rhythm and blues.

  Little Richard

  Thinking, Rocks, Down And

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• I wanna show that gospel, country, blues, rhythm and blues, jazz, rock 'n' roll are all just really one thing. Those are the American music and that is the American culture.

  Etta James

  Country, Rocks, Culture

  FaceBook post by Etta James from Jun 16, 2012

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• The Beatles and The Stones were basically inspired by American Rhythm and Blues

  Mick Taylor

  Stones, Inspired, Rhythm

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• Everybody started calling my music rock and roll, but it wasn't anything but the same rhythm and blues I'd been playing down in New Orleans.

  Fats Domino

  New Orleans, Rocks, Rock And Roll

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• Our repertoire consisted of rhythm and blues, sort of country rhythm and blues, Sonny Terry things.

  Ray Davies

  Country, Rhythm

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• It used to be called boogie-woogie, it used to be called blues, used to be called rhythm and blues...It's called rock now.

  Chuck Berry

  Rocks, Used, Boogie

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• Isn't my music the last of the real rhythm and blues? Isn't it great? It's because of my musicians, we were weaned on Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, all the founding fathers, the gods of thunder, who invented the foundation and the pulse of the greatest music in the world!

  Ted Nugent

  Father, Real, Water

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• We write to expose the unexposed. Most human beings are dedicated to keeping that one door shut. But the writer's job is to see what's behind it, to see the bleak unspeakable stuff, and to turn the unspeakable into words - not just into any words but if we can, into rhythm and blues. You can't do this without discovering your own true voice, and you can't find your true voice and peer behind the door and report honestly and clearly to us if your parents are reading over your shoulder.

  Anne Lamott

  Jobs, Reading, Writing

  Anne Lamott (2007). “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life”, p.198, Anchor

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• Depending on who I am talking about or who's talking through me - if the person is a kind of hip-hop, or rhythm and blues person, or if the person is a kind of old-fashion gothic, meaning gothic attitude, then that will determine what form the poem will take.

  Maya Angelou

  Fashion, Attitude, Who I Am

  Source: therumpus.net

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• Elvis Presley's death deprives our country of a part of itself. He was unique, irreplaceable. More than twenty years ago, he burst upon the scene with an impact that was unprecedented and will probably never be equaled. His music and his personality, fusing the styles of white country and black rhythm and blues, permanently changed the face of American popular culture. His following was immense. And he was a symbol to people the world over of the vitality, rebelliousness and good humor of this country.

  Jimmy Carter

  Country, Unique, Years

  Statement by the President on the Death of Elvis Presley, www.presidency.ucsb.edu. August 17, 1977.

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• You can't seperate modern jazz from rock or from rhythm and blues - you can't seperate it. Because that's where it all started, and that's where it all come from - that's where I learned to keep rhythm - in church

  Art Blakey

  Music, Rocks, Church

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• We write to expose the unexposed. If there is one door in the castle you have been told not to go through, you must. The writer's job is to turn the unspeakable into words - not just into any words, but if we can, into rhythm and blues.

  Anne Lamott

  Jobs, Writing, Doors

  Anne Lamott (2007). “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life”, p.198, Anchor

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• I am so weak over love and heartbreak. My music is rhythm and blues and with that said, the blues element of it is a major portion. I feel like it has been lost in R&B and a lot of people are scared to talk about their vulnerabilities and insecurities. They want to keep it up and in the club.

  Adrian Marcel

  People, Insecurity, Elements

  Source: youknowigotsoul.com

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• At Carnegie Hall the Preservation Hall Jazz Band showed how easily it could hop from era to era. It could work like a rhythm-and-blues horn section or a tightly arranged little big band if need be, but it could also switch back into the polyphonic glories of vintage New Orleans jazz, in which nearly every instrument seems to improvise around the tune at the same time.

  Jon Pareles

  New Orleans, Vintage, Tunes

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• I wasn't popular in school, I was Mexican, I was all these inappropriate things. I started playing the ukulele and taking it to school, and I realized people liked listening to it. I would play it to comfort myself at home, and I'd play rhythm and blues songs that had four chords. That's how it started.

  Joan Baez

  Song, Home, School

  Source: www.azcentral.com

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• The white music was melodic and pretty, and you had beautiful women's voices like Gogi Grant and even the Andrews Sisters. Then I went directly to rhythm and blues, which had beautiful voices but not much melody in particular and pretty much the same chord pattern. I loved it, I was entrenched in it, but then folk music came in the middle of that for me, and made its own path. And it was part of the rebellion against bubblegum music, or music that is pretty but doesn't say anything.

  Joan Baez

  Beautiful, Voice, White

  Source: www.azcentral.com

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• When I started off in Wales, I sang and accompanied myself with guitar in the '50s. And then I got a band together, which is a rhythm section, really. I used to do a lot of blues, and rhythm and blues, and '50s rock 'n' roll and country, and all kinds of stuff.

  Tom Jones

  Country, Rocks, Guitar

  "What's new, Tom Jones? The hitmaker is still finding more things to sing about". Interview with Roger Catlin, www.washingtonpost.com. September 15, 2016.

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• Back then I was still listening to rhythm and blues, and my aunt took me to see a Pete Seeger concert. And it gelled. He made all the sense in the world to me. I got addicted to his albums, and then Belafonte and Odetta - they were the people who seemed to fuse things that were important to me into music. I think Pete the most because he did what he did to the point where he took those enormous risks and then paid for them.

  Joan Baez

  Thinking, Aunt, People

  "Q&A with Joan Baez: Even Taylor Swift thinks she's cool". Interview with Roger Catlin, www.washingtonpost.com. March 4, 2016.

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• I was singing when I was five years old. My sister and I both had the talent from mom and dad, and she was in opera and I was into pop and uh, rhythm and blues, anything, I was about a four octave singer.

  Carl Gardner

  Mom, Dad, Years

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• When I'm in Los Angeles, it's hard to be creative. For me, New Orleans is one of those places that's like a muse. You can hear music on the streets. There's a certain character the city has that inspires you when you're needing to write lyrics and come up with melodies and come up with rhythm and blues. The city has a pulse and it's an inspiration for me.

  Chris Thomas King

  Inspiration, Writing, Character

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• Our radio plays rhythm and blues as we pass the joint back and forth in jutjawed silence both looking ahead with big private thoughts now so vast we can't communicate them anymore and if we tried it would take a million years and a billion books - Too late, too late, the history of everything we've seen together and separately has become a library in itself - The shelves pile higher - They're full of misty documents or documents of the Mist-.

  Jack Kerouac

  Book, Years, Play

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• When I wrote the song, I had the sea near Bombay in mind. We stayed at a hotel by the sea, and the fishermen come up at five in the morning and they were all chanting. And we went on the beach and we got chased by a mad dog-big as a donkey. ... I think that songwriting changed when groups started spending more time in the studio. ... I've written so many songs about Englishmen, I have to go elsewhere. ... Our repertoire consisted of rhythm and blues, sort of country rhythm and blues, Sonny Terry things.

  Ray Davies

  Country, Dog, Song

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• What's holding me up is I'm confused about the nature of the music. Because the modern music doesn't reach me. I mean to say the sound of the modern electric production. A lot of sequencers... synths. That's what people are buying. Because that doesn't reach me, it throws me back to like 1948, but I don't want to be there. Back there, I'm talking about blues records... The roots of rock'n'roll is rhythm and blues and that's like really where I'm at, where I was always at.

  Joe Strummer

  Confused, Mean, Rocks

  "Strummer on Man, God, Law - and the Clash". Interviewed with Richard Cromelin, articles.latimes.com. January 31, 1988.

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• I love Ruth Brown, not just her singing, but Ruth Brown has more girl power than anyone, because she fought hard against people who ripped her off and then helped other artists through the Rhythm and Blues Foundation.

  Ronnie Spector

  Girl, Artist, People

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