I go out with my band six months of the year and the rest of them with the Blues Brothers.
Johnny Winter is one of the best blues players in the world. He's very underrated.
White folks hear the blues come out, but they don't know how it got there.
One performer whose band played my music better than I could myself was Art Farmer. He recorded 'Sing Me Softly of the Blues' and 'Ad Infinitum'.
It is from the blues that all that may be called American music derives its most distinctive character.
One of my reasons for living in California is its close proximity to Mexico. The Latin influence is in every corner of the community. My love of Spanish music hasn't wavered since the '50s. I could hear the blues voicing from the Flamanco families and I always dig for inspiration in Latin music.
Sounds like the blues are composed of feeling, finesse, and fear.
I find Indian music very funky. I mean it's very soulful, with their own kind of blues. But it's the only other school on the planet that develops improvisation to the high degree that you find in jazz music. So we have a lot of common ground.
There was some scene in The Blues Brothers movie, when they had the chicken wire across the front of the stage, and it was almost like that. They had a big guard rail around the stage, which kept the college kids from getting on... we had some good times.
The Band is probably the ultimate example of people taking all kinds of music, from gospel to blues to mountain music to folk music to on and on and on and on and putting them all in this big pot and mixing up a new gumbo.
What makes my approach special is that I do different things. I do jazz, blues, country music and so forth. I do them all, like a good utility man.
The blues scale was the first thing I learned. It's just a pentatonic scale with a flat seventh and a few notes that sound cool when you bend them. And because people have amalgamated the blues into this rock-blues scale, if you're using it, you better sound like a real authentic blues player.
Hill Street Blues might have been the first television show that had a memory. One episode after another was part of a cumulative experience shared by the audience.
I started to like blues, I guess, when I was about 6 or 7 years old. There was something about it, because nobody else played that kind of music.
I suppose I was waiting until I was old enough to have some sort of experience to sing about. When you're young, it's hard to sing the blues. Nobody believes you.
I had always intended to make a living out of playing blues. But I never admitted it to myself. I don't suppose I could have given a logical reason for it ever becoming possible to do so.
I been in the blues all my life. I'm still delivering 'cause I got a long memory.
What you have to understand is that blues... it's in a line from the oldest forms of African music. If you're playing it like it's an echo of the past, it would be a lot less exciting, but this music lives today.
The old Fleetwood Mac was much better; they did some beautiful and, to my mind, very authentic blues. Chicken Shack did pretty well in Europe, but after I left, it was over.
The blues brings you back into the fold. The blues isn't about the blues, it's about we have all had the blues and we are all in this together.
I think the blues will always be around. People need it.
There was a time we decided that it was songs that were done especially from my background because of the things we were dealing with, but nowadays, anybody who has a need, and can find the need, they can sing the blues.
Nobody can tell you how the blues feel unless they have the blues. We all take it differently.
In 1940 I came across a record by Jimmy Yancey. I can't say how important that record is. From then on, all I wanted to do was play the blues.
I tend to play a lot of blues things at home, because most blues things are basically within a 12-bar pattern.
Most people say, 'Well, Earl, you sing the blues,' or however they want to categorize it. I just sing songs.
All the blues greats took chances and developed their own style. They didn't copy.
I've always loved the blues, John Lee Hooker, Janis Joplin, Hendrix.
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.
If you don't know the blues... there's no point in picking up the guitar and playing rock and roll or any other form of popular music.
If you ask me, rockabilly has had a raw deal for far too long. People never shunned the blues or jazz the way they do rockabilly. But it's the original punk-rock, and it changed the way people looked at music for ever.
There's a difference between the blues of the New Orleans guys and anyone else and the difference is in a chord, but I can't figure the name of it. It's a different chord, and they all make it.
From folk to tribal to Cab Calloway, Cole Porter, Gershwin to the Rolling Stones, whose first record was all covers, to country-western, bebop, blues, and even the referencing in classic hip hop to cliched love ballads of the '80s or whatever - that is kinda gone, and that's just terrifying to me.
To me, country music is like the blues, but it's something very hip and - I don't want to say commercial - but it's very worldly and good listening.
If you can't play the blues... you might as well hang it up.
I would look at older blues musicians who just keep going into their seventies. They keep doing it until they drop dead. And I've always felt like that's what I want to do. I've felt that since the day I was able to start playing music for a living. I don't see the point of thinking about retiring because it's not work to begin with.
