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Country Blues => Weenie Campbell Main Forum => Topic started by: Rivers on May 11, 2007, 03:28:12 PM

Title: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: Rivers on May 11, 2007, 03:28:12 PM
  Q u o t e   D r i v e   2 0 0 7 
One of the enduring and endearing features of the weenie site is the quotes box that appears below the heading on each page. Currently there are 432 quotes in the database, just enough so that when the server picks one at random they don't come around too often.

But... we need new blood! We'd like to encourage everyone who visits the site to be on the lookout for new quotes and post them to this thread. Periodically we'll add the new ones to the quotes database.

So when you're reading books and liner notes, or transcribing lyrics, and spot something that should be in the quotes database please post the exact text right here, followed by some attribution. Attribution is important for 'fair use', people might want to buy the book or CD and we like to support that kind of thing.

The standard format we have adopted is as follows:

This is the body text of the quote - this is who said it, in what context
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: Rivers on May 11, 2007, 03:29:11 PM
So to kick things off, here's one I spotted recently:

"...probably the low point of my music-listening career": Mississippi bluesmen Skip James and John Hurt trying to perform a version of "Waiting for a Train" with one playing waltz time and the other 4/4 - David Evans quoted in Nolan Porterfield's biography of Jimmie Rodgers
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: dj on May 11, 2007, 04:03:28 PM
When I asked Son House to listen to a particular line from a song by Charley Patton that I could not make out, House laughed.  He said "You could sit at Charley's feet and not understand a word he sang." - Jeff Todd Titon, "Early Downhome Blues"
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: Bunker Hill on May 11, 2007, 10:58:22 PM
I would think there must be a few "gems" contained in some of the ancient pieces I've posted over the past year or so. If time permits I might trawl them and copy/paste here.
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: Great Bear on May 12, 2007, 01:24:17 PM
"This world is not made to suit no one man's order." - Roosevelt Sykes (Blues Collection 46, Orbis Publishing Ltd. pg 550)

"G'WAY an' quit dat noise, Miss Lucy--
          Put dat music book away;
What's de use to keep on tryin'?
          Ef you practise twell you're gray." - Paul Lawrence Dunbar

From Paul Lawrence Dunbar's poem When Malindy Sings, and recorded by Rev. James A. Myers of The Fisk University Jubilee Quartet. Available from Document Records on The Fisk Jubilee Singers Vol.1 1909-11 DOCD-5533. The Fisk's might fall well outside the scope and tastes of Weenie Campbell, and have only been present in B&GR since the 4th edition, however I think this is such a wonderful quote that applies equally to anyone learning an instrument today as it did to Miss Lucy. :)
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: dj on May 12, 2007, 01:41:38 PM
"[We played in] restaurants, taverns, and gangster hangouts.  Played... Italian music, German music, we played polka music... we'd play blues, too... we played wherever the dancers was."  - Roosevelt Scott, on the life of a "bluesman" in Chicago in the 1940s.  From an interview with Jim O'Neal, quoted in the notes to Document CD 5413.
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: dj on May 12, 2007, 02:23:11 PM
"The words was the hardest thing to get and make 'em stick.  Sometimes you'd sit down at night and write two or three songs, but they had the same tune to mostly all.  All the blues pretty near sound alike unless you got a rare voice and put turns and trills in it."  - Thomas A. "Georgia Tom" Dorsey, interviewed by Jim O'Neal and Amy van Singel, from The Voice Of The Blues
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: Rivers on May 12, 2007, 04:45:36 PM
Thanks guys, great stuff, and all are new. I expect we'll get some repeats, I'll mark those as we go.

"Who's treating?" - Stack Lee Shelton before joining Billy Lyons for a drink, eyewitness George McFaro in Stagolee Shot Billy, Cecil Brown
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: mmpresti on May 12, 2007, 08:57:38 PM
Hammy Nixon: Well I know you can see better than I can
Sleepy John Estes: I'll ask Rachell, how do you feel Rachell?
Yank Rachell: You don't need to see to play music
Sleepy John Estes: Well, now that's what I'm talking about...when I'm coughin' I create it out of my soul...Delmark records say, "We don't want any of that..good, right?...spoil it."

Yank Rachell's Tennessee Jug Busters conversation before the track "Shout Baby Shout"
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: Johnm on May 12, 2007, 11:08:26 PM
"You know Blue was mighty true."
   
   "Old Dog Blue"--Jim Jackson
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: Bunker Hill on May 13, 2007, 02:50:37 AM
"[We played in] restaurants, taverns, and gangster hangouts.  Played... Italian music, German music, we played polka music... we'd play blues, too... we played wherever the dancers was."  - Roosevelt Scott, on the life of a "bluesman" in Chicago in the 1940s.  From an interview with Jim O'Neal, quoted in the notes to Document CD 5413.
That's awfully familiar. It's Jim O'Neal in his superb sleevenotes to the double LP Okeh Chicago Blues, Epic EG37318, 1982, from an unpublished interview. Bob Eagle also interviewed Scott and that was published in Blues World 43, (Summer 1972 p.9 & 12) as "Roosvelt [sic] Scott Remembers ?.". If it's interesting enough I might scan and post as new topic.
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: Rivers on May 13, 2007, 06:30:44 AM
"If you don't give me my hat I will blow your brains out" - Stack Lee Shelton told Billy Lyons, eyewitness George McFaro's account in Stagolee Shot Billy, Cecil Brown
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: Slack on May 13, 2007, 08:55:45 AM
"I was thinkin' that she loved me, she was talkin' holes all in my clothes" - J.B. Lenore, 'I Lost My Baby'
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: uncle bud on May 13, 2007, 10:18:22 AM
"Bedbug's big as a jackass, he will bite you and stand and grin. Drink up all the bedbug poison, come back and bite you again." - Furry Lewis, 'Mean Old Bedbug Blues'
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: Bunker Hill on May 14, 2007, 11:46:45 AM
Here's a weird quote if ever there were.

On page 72 of "Oh, Didn't He Ramble The Life Story of Lee Collins as told to Mary Collins" (Illinois UP, 1977) there's a few pages where he recalls 30s & 40s blues singers he worked with, and on page 73:

"During those years [Chicago late 30s] there was also a blues singer by the name of Dr Clayton out of Vicksburg, Mississippi.  He was very popular and made a lot of records. 'Danny Boy' was his favourite and he could really sing it, but he was more of a blues singer."

He then goes on to say Clayton was a heavy drinker and thought he died in 1946,

B-u-t, Dr Clayton, singing 'Danny Boy'? The mind boggles.
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: Rivers on May 14, 2007, 04:32:17 PM
Here's a couple Johnm submitted that we've been keeping on ice in the back room:

When a man gets hairy you know he needs a shave, when a woman gets musty you know she needs a bathe - Texas Alexander, 98 Degree Blues

Baby if I had wings like a bullfrog on the farm, I would rise right here and light in sweet mama's arms - Yank Rachell, Sweet Mama
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: Rivers on May 16, 2007, 06:12:34 PM
In 1968, Wells returned from a State Department-sponsored tour of Africa and told a Newsweek correspondent, "We got to one place and they had banners saying 'Welcome Home, Junior'. I told 'em, man I said, this ain't my home, I live one block north of the Loop. Then they asked me what I thought of black power. I said black power is me making it with Aretha Franklin." - from Larry Cohn's Nothing But The Blues
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: Great Bear on May 17, 2007, 10:23:47 AM
"My first experience with a talking machine...had been back in Helena, Montana, in 1897. I had made a record with my minstrel band on an old cylinder machine." - W.C Handy

"'W.C Handy Is A Liar!' Says Jelly Roll" - Down Beat headline, August 1938

"That woman was tougher than a man." Homesick James on Memphis Minnie

"She'd work Son Joe over right on the bandstand, right in front of the audience. Bang, bop, boom, bop!" - Johnny Shines on Minnie

Update: The first two quotes can be found in Lost Sounds by Tim Brooks, and the two Minnie quotes appear together in The Blues Collection #76 - Memphis Minnie.
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: outfidel on May 17, 2007, 06:47:55 PM
"He and Elizabeth Cotten developed a good friendship. He liked her music, too. He told me earlier that if he were to start playing all over again, he would want to play guitar like Mississippi John Hurt." -- Mike Seeger, recalling his interviews with Dock Boggs
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: Stuart on May 17, 2007, 07:55:43 PM
I saw Son House in the early 70s. He looked at one of the ladies in attendance and said, "I may be an old man, but I have young ideas."
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: mmpresti on May 17, 2007, 10:17:45 PM
"You heard 'em at home say gamblers just don't loose out ain't ya? We all taken' a chance when we play one of them numbers and it don't come out like we want it--but play 'em anyhow...Keep on bettin'...you're bound to win. That's when you gonna play policy all over again".  Lightnin' Hopkins Policy Blues

"Uh--but we celebratin' Christmas wrong from the way I look at the matter--shootin' off fireworks, cussin', and dancin', raisin' all other kinds of sand...uh--Death may be your Santa Claus! All of you who are decoratin' your rooms and gettin' ready for an all night dance--Death may be your Santa Claus! Death is on your track and is going to overtake you after awhile--Death may be your Santa Claus!"  Reverend J.M. Gates

"Ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, well well
ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, well well
Now what's on my mind, ooo, now you know you never can tell"
Peetie Wheatstraw Numbers Blues

"Boys you know now if I were you, you know I'd quit gamblin, do like I do...let it go...follow up on me...gamblin, it will ruin you, now good boys, let's all be the same way, like I am" Peetie Wheatstraw Numbers Blues
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: mmpresti on May 17, 2007, 10:40:44 PM
My bad, the Wheatstraw lyric goes like this:

Oooo, mmm, mmm, Ooo ooo, well, well, well, well, well
oooo, ooo, mmm, ooo, mmm, well, well, well
Now what's on my mind, ooo, well, well, now you know it's hard to tell
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: Rivers on May 18, 2007, 03:56:53 PM
Thanks for the excellent entries. All are new to the quotes database.

Stuart, great to be able to quote an actual weenie quoting a deceased legendary figure first hand. Johnm and his Sam Chatmon quote was the lone entry I believe up to that point, I may be wrong.

mmpresti, the Peetie Wheatstraw lyric bookends perfectly the hummed verse in John Jackson's Red River Blues. We have a set, mm mmm, mm mm mmm.

I'll post some more and add all the new ones to the database over the weekend. Please post some more as you find them guys.
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: dj on May 18, 2007, 06:16:06 PM
Not sure if you're looking for gospel quotes, but one of my favorites, for it's definite placement of the Almighty in time and place, is:

"Nineteen Hundred and Twenty Seven, fourteenth day of November, God rode through Pittsburgh, over on the North Side" - Reverend E. W. Clayborn, God's Riding Through The Land
 
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: Johnm on May 18, 2007, 09:17:43 PM
Comment from Bill Monroe to a youthful Russ Barenberg and John Miller, backstage at the Delaware Bluegrass Festival in 1973, after having heard the band they were in, Country Cooking, play a set.
   "Boys, I heard what you were doing up there, and I want you to keep playing those new notes."
All best,
Johnm
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: Johnm on May 18, 2007, 09:25:25 PM
Bill Williams, expressing concern to John Miller and Nick Perls with regard to performing for audiences at the 1974 Smithsonian Folklife Festival:
   "I'm worried they won't understand my brogue."
all best,
Johnm
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: uncle bud on May 19, 2007, 10:51:45 AM
This one popped up locally in the newspaper for the 50th anniversary of the St. Viateur bagel shop, and since JohnM just posted an amusing Bill Monroe quote, I thought I'd do the same.

"Dang! This is the worst doughnut I ever did eat." - Bill Monroe takes his first bite of a bagel
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: dj on May 19, 2007, 12:06:17 PM
We used to go to different people's houses, you know.  In those days I mean they could hear music and - if somebody could play an instrument, man, they would get up at night, from one o'clock; and they'd fix food and they'd have drinks and they'd stay up till five, six o'clock in the morning and give you money.  It wasn't a dance but a serenade; we'd go from house to house.  In those days there wasn't too much things like juke boxes, high fidelity sound, wasn't nothing like that then; and whenever somebody could play and could play well, he was considered as somebody; he could go anywhere and he had it made, you know? - Baby Doo Caston, on playing music in Natchez in the 1920s, interview with Jeff Todd Titon.
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: dj on May 19, 2007, 12:09:36 PM
"If you asked me a request today and I didn't know it, I'd go get the sheet music tomorrow and learn it so I wouldn't be caught the next time." - Carl Martin blows away the stereotype of the primitive, illiterate bluesman, interview with Jeff Todd Titon.
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: mmpresti on May 19, 2007, 08:49:07 PM
"Well I had started that about the age of twelve...see my mother had a guitar, my father made her a present of a guitar, and he taught her a few chords, but I first started on a little outfit I  made with a cigar box...I made a guitar with a cigar box, had peg keys, bored holes in the head, and I had uh...the strings graduated from fishing twine down on to thread" Johnny St. Cyr, guitarist for the Jelly Roll Morton's Red Hot Peppers in an interview with Alan Lomax on how he learned to play guitar.
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: natterjack on May 20, 2007, 04:40:13 AM
I played all through Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama and around in Kentucky and places, but I never played in Texas, but I played all over the cotton belt countries

Howlin' Wolf - Interview with Pete Welding, Chicago, ca. 1967
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: Bunker Hill on May 20, 2007, 05:20:32 AM
I played all through Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama and around in Kentucky and places, but I never played in Texas, but I played all over the cotton belt countries
Howlin' Wolf - Interview with Pete Welding, Chicago, ca. 1967
Don't know the context in which this was found but originally said in "I Sing For The People: An Interview with Howlin? Wolf" (Down Beat, 14 Dec 1967, p.20-23) which two years later was serialised over four issues of Blues Unlimited.
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: natterjack on May 20, 2007, 05:53:05 AM
Don't know the context in which this was found but originally said in "I Sing For The People: An Interview with Howlin? Wolf" (Down Beat, 14 Dec 1967, p.20-23) which two years later was serialised over four issues of Blues Unlimited.

Hello BH. I got from the last disc in the Charley Patton box set on Revenant.
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: Rivers on May 21, 2007, 05:31:48 PM
* * *   U p d a t e d   * * *

I've updated the quotes database, we have 34 new quotes.

This thread will stay open, please post more as you find them.

Thanks to all!
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: Great Bear on May 27, 2007, 10:40:14 AM
"He [Ted Bogan] was playing with picks that you put on your fingers and I didn't like that as an accompaniment, so I made him throw them away and I told him I would play the lead and he would play the accompaniment." - Carl Martin on hooking up with Ted Bogan (Blues & Rhythm #218 Stompin' In Knox County)

"Down in Tupelo, Mississippi, I used to hear old Arthur Crudup bang his box the way I do now, and I said if I ever got to the place where I could feel all old Arthur felt, I'd be a music man like nobody ever saw." - Elvis Presley
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: uncle bud on May 28, 2007, 07:14:11 AM
He no longer had a guitar and he hadn't played much in twenty years, but when I asked him if he could still sing and play he straightened and said, 'I'm better now than I ever was.'  - Sam Charters tracks down Furry Lewis in 1959, from Walking a Blues Road
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: dj on May 28, 2007, 08:05:44 AM
And he told me... I didn't know nothing about how to play no guitar at all.  He said 'Hey, go home.  Take my advice.  You go home.  You get that.. straight.  You know what I'm talking about?  Put that pick down.  You think I'm scolding you?  You a grown man, Hubert - listen to me!'  I went home, man.  I went to my basement.  And I'm going to tell you something...  I was thinking about what Wolf said.  He said 'Hey, put the pick down.'  I put the pick down, man.  I put the pick down and started using... fingers, you know what I mean?  -  Hubert Sumlin, on how Howlin' Wolf introduced him to fingerpicking.  From Moanin' At Midnight by James Segrest and Mark Hoffman
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: dj on May 28, 2007, 08:15:55 AM
Yeah, [Willie Brown] could make up verses pretty good.  Yeah, 'cause he'd start on one thing he'd let near about every word be pertaining to what he pronounced what he was going to play about.  That's the difference in him and Charley [Patton]...  Charley, he could start singing of the shoe there and wind up singing about that banana.  -  Son House, interview with Stefan Grossman 
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: Bunker Hill on May 28, 2007, 12:34:25 PM
He no longer had a guitar and he hadn't played much in twenty years, but when I asked him if he could still sing and play he straightened and said, 'I'm better now than I ever was.'  - Sam Charters tracks down Furry Lewis in 1959, from Walking a Blues Road
Thought this sounded familiar, it's in the booklet accompanying the 1960 Folkways LP. I like the way Charters ends his introductory notes:

"The penciled message on his hat, too, suggested some of the delight with life that has given to his blues their warmth and vitality

KID FURRY - Have Gun Will Travel

[No doubt inspired by the popular TV series of late 50s in which the main character carried a "business card" reading Have Gun Will Travel, Wire Paladin. BH] ;D
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: Bill Roggensack on May 28, 2007, 03:38:24 PM
I've had the blues so long they done turned into the blacks. - Yank Rachell

Source:  http://www.mandolindy.com/yank (http://www.mandolindy.com/yank)
 
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: lindy on May 31, 2007, 12:32:31 PM

Checked in today and found this quote at the top of the page:

"All music is folk music, 'cause we?re all folks - Louis Armstrong"

It reminded me of something that Big Bill Broonzy said to Pete Seeger when Seeger asked him if the blues was folk music:

"Of course the blues is folk music, you never heard a horse sing 'em, have you?"

Lindy
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: GhostRider on May 31, 2007, 01:15:43 PM
Here's one:

"Saturday night is your big night. Everybody used to fry up fish and have one hell of a time. Find me playing till sunrise for 50 cents and a sandwich. And be glad of it. And they really liked the low-down blues."

Muddy Waters


Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: Rivers on June 02, 2007, 08:46:29 PM
"I didn't mean to kill nobody," Burnside later said of the murder. "I just meant to shoot the sonofabitch in the head. Him dying was between him and the Lord" - Obit, Daily Telegraph

Thanks for that gem Luzi
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: Coyote Slim on June 03, 2007, 12:41:38 PM
"Don't let nobody tell you a man ain't supposed to cry
Just wait till someone you love tells you bye, bye, bye"
--Henry Townsend "The Train is At the Station"
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: dj on June 04, 2007, 03:48:16 AM
"Good God, why doesn't that man yodel and be done with it?" - A woman in the audience, commenting on Peetie Wheatstraw's signature "ooh, well well", recounted by Teddy Darby, quoted in Paul Garon's The Devil's Son-In-Law
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: uncle bud on June 04, 2007, 07:23:57 AM
I don't have an actual copy of the original article from which this quote is sourced (Steve James "Texas Blues" Blues Revue #30 Aug/Sept 1997), as I found it in the issue of Black Music Research Journal Vol 20 No. 1 devoted to Blind Lemon Jefferson (for which I believe I thanked Bunker Hill for the tip, but if not, many belated thanks). This almost sounds like it could be a Steve James quote. ;D Don't know where Steve got it but would be curious to know.

"I can't see ya, but I can smell ya!" - Blind Lemon Jefferson quoted by Steve James, "Texas Blues" Blues Revue #30 Aug/Sept 1997
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: lindy on June 04, 2007, 08:27:02 AM

"I don't play by alphabet."

--Robert Belfour, in response to a PT05 question on what note he was playing.
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: LusciousLucy on June 04, 2007, 01:24:26 PM
?Most blues begin with 'Woke up this mornin'.....' This is to differentiate blues musicians from most other musicians, who sleep past noon."

the Rooster (cit. from http://www.bluesdatabase.com/)
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: Rivers on June 07, 2007, 06:14:58 PM
As far as singing goes, I wanted to do something new and have a style that wasn't too common.  I was inspired by the records of Jimmie Rodgers, a white singer of that time.  He was called the 'yodeling singer' because he would sing some parts in a head voice, like the Swiss yodelers.  I took that idea and adapted it to my own abilities.  I couln't do no yodelin' so I turned to howlin'.  And it's done me just fine - Howlin' Wolf

From Cambio's post in the Jimmie Rodgers thread
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: Rivers on June 13, 2007, 04:23:47 AM
I love my girl like a schoolboy loves his pie. Like a Kentucky white man loves his rock & rye. I love my girl until the day I die - Jim Jackson, St Louis Blues, 1930
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: dj on June 30, 2007, 12:10:54 PM
We knows nothing much about the blues... we called it blues, we called it breakdowns, we called it blues and some people say it's square dances...  We didn't know what it was; the achin'-hearted blues is slow, breakdowns is fast.  Percy Thomas, who played in the Son Simms Four with Muddy Waters, interviewed by Paul Oliver, from Blues Off The Record.   
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: Johnm on July 04, 2007, 03:50:10 PM
Hi all,
Here's one from Bill Williams, turning down the opportunity to partake in a crab feast:  "What, is that like a crawdad?"
All best,
Johnm
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: Rivers on July 09, 2007, 03:10:32 AM
Some nice ones from the Mitch Holder in Mel Bay's Interviews With The Jazz Greats. This slim volume of 27 collected articles is a fun read if you dabble with jazz guitar. Mitch Holder talks a lot of musical sense:

My motto is; if you don't hit some 'wrong' notes once in a while you're not trying hard enough - Mitch Holder on playing live, Interviews With The Jazz Greats

On one cue he said "Mitch, why don't you say this", and played what he wanted on the piano. I never heard that expression from anyone else except him; and what it said to us was how much he respected us, which was an incredible feeling from someone like that, who we all gave the utmost respect - Mitch Holder on working with composer Dave Grusin on the movie soundtrack On Golden Pond, Interviews With The Jazz Greats
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: Rivers on July 14, 2007, 06:01:36 AM
Willie McTell quotes from the Crapshooter thread:

I'd jump 'em from other writers, but I'd 'range 'em up my way - Willie McTell, intro to Beedle Um Bum, Last Sessions

I had to steal music from every which a way to get it... to get it to fit - Willie McTell, intro to The Dyin' Crapshooter's Blues, Last Sessions
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: mississippijohnhurt1928 on July 15, 2007, 07:56:22 PM
"If you steal my wife and stay out late, I'll have to take my knife and operate."- Rosco Gordon
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: Great Bear on July 29, 2007, 09:35:46 AM
"She was really an ugly woman...but when she opened her mouth - that was it! You forgot everything. She knew how to sing those blues, and she got right into your heart. What a personality she had. One of the greatest of all singers." - Champion Jack Dupree on Ma Rainey, ("Ma Rainey and The Classic Blues Singers" - Derrick Stewart-Baxter.)

"You see, she liked these young musicians, and in comes John Work and I - we were young to her. We were something sent down, and she didn't know which one to choose. Each of us knew we were not choosing her! We just wanted to talk, but she was interested in other things." - Sterling Brown on Ma Rainey, ("Ma Rainey and The Classic Blues Singers" - Derrick Stewart-Baxter.)

"The people screamed, she was that ugly." Ruby Walker commenting on Ma Rainey's entrance during a live performance. ("Bessie" - Chris Albertson.)
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: mississippijohnhurt1928 on July 29, 2007, 08:41:22 PM
"I'll blow your mother fucking head off"
-Robert Lockwood Jr's response to record executives trying to cheat him out of his money


(Now, I read this a while ago somewhere, don't remember where, but it sounds like robert  ;D :P)
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: Great Bear on August 02, 2007, 04:26:53 AM
Giles Oakley's The Devil's Music (BBC) is a treasure trove of quotes, albeit from various sources:

"It was just before I went into the army about 40, 42 I think, I heard of a guy called T-Bone Walker and that was the first electric guitar I'd ever heard...and I went crazy, I went completely nutty...I think that he had the clearest touch of anybody I'd ever heard on guitar then." B.B King on T-Bone Walker

"I sing city blues...My style of singing has nothing to do with the part of the country I come from. It comes from my soul within. The heartaches and the things that have happened to me in my life - that's what makes a good blues singer." Lonnie Johnson

"I didn't like the way he sang. He was my brother, but he just had a way (Sings) 'Saddle up my pony, hook up my black maaaaare...' I didn't like that!...Now he picks good, but he just brings that song out, like there's somebody choking to death." Sam Chatmon on Charley Patton

"I don't know what brought on the Depression...I didn't feel so depressed for I didn't have a thing to start with." Georgia Tom Dorsey
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: mississippijohnhurt1928 on August 05, 2007, 02:04:34 PM
"I don't want this ever published while I'm alive,because if I did get any money for it, I would just drink myself to death."
-Blind Willie McTell On His 1956 Recordings
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: Coyote Slim on August 07, 2007, 11:46:36 AM
Hey, is there somewhere we can see all the quotes?
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: Slack on August 07, 2007, 12:04:35 PM
Sorry CS, the Quote Oracle is omnipotent and we have no idea where these quotes come from.

 :D

Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: mr mando on August 09, 2007, 06:22:18 AM
"Haven't you heard, the older the buck the stiffer the horn." - Yank Rachell, during one of his later hospitalizations, amourously cornering a nurse. As quoted in "Blues Mandolin Man".

Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: mississippijohnhurt1928 on August 09, 2007, 04:05:57 PM
"Haven't you heard, the older the buck the stiffer the horn." - Yank Rachell, during one of his later hospitalizations, amourously cornering a nurse. As quoted in "Blues Mandolin Man".



I just read that book!

I think that was a line he used on some woman who was a member of the Indiana Blues Society.
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: Coyote Slim on August 09, 2007, 04:27:19 PM
Sorry CS, the Quote Oracle is omnipotent and we have no idea where these quotes come from.

 :D



That's a good one in of itself.
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: Great Bear on August 10, 2007, 04:13:25 AM
This quote is taken from Josh White - Live! (ABC-Paramount 407), but according to Stacy Williams' notes was originally featured in the July, 1961 issue of "33 Guide".

"In 1950, Mrs. [Franklin D.] Roosevelt took Josh on a concert tour of Europe. In England, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Scotland, he sang to sell-out crowds. Fifty thousand people showed up for one concert in Stockholm and at an Ambassador's party on Copenhagen; even the King of Denmark sat on the floor and joined in singing spirituals. In England, Princess Margaret asked Josh to sing Don't Smoke In Bed." - Peter Rachtman, July, 1961 issue of 33 Guide, on Josh White's earlier visits to Europe.
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: Rivers on August 10, 2007, 05:02:42 PM
I hate to see the rising sun go down - Furry Lewis, St. Louis Blues
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: mississippijohnhurt1928 on August 10, 2007, 05:05:43 PM
"Little girl, I'll turn your money green
I'll give you more dollars tha Rockefeller ever seen."

-Furry Lewis
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: Great Bear on August 17, 2007, 06:26:08 AM
Here are two more quotes from Giles Oakley's The Devil's Music, regarding the early development of boogie-woogie:

"I would say that Boogie-Woogie was the bad little boy of the rag family who wouldn't study. I heard crude beginnings of it in the back streets of New Orleans, in those early years following 1904, but they were really back streets...such music never got played in 'gilded palaces'." - Roy Carew

"He had a left hand like God. He didn't know what key he was playing in, but he played them all. He could play the ragtime stride bass, but it bothered him because his stomach got in the way of his arm, so he used a walking bass instead. I can remember when I was thirteen - this was 1896 - how Turk would play one note with his right hand and at the same time four with his left. We called it 'sixteen' - they called it boogie-woogie." - Eubie Blake remembering William Turk
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: Coyote Slim on August 17, 2007, 12:06:39 PM
"...I know I ain't common 'cause I've got class I ain't even used yet." -- Louis Jordan "Open the Door, Richard."
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: Coyote Slim on September 11, 2007, 09:16:02 PM
"My bull's in a pasture where there's no grass
...every minute seems like it gonna be my last"

Charley Patton, "Jersey Bull Blues"
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: Rivers on September 12, 2007, 05:28:47 PM
* * *   U p d a t e d   * * *

Added 35 new quotes. Thanks all, please keep them coming.
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: lindy on September 21, 2007, 08:24:25 AM

I mean, when you think about it, old blues men are always old, right?

                                            --Jerry Ricks
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: Rivers on September 21, 2007, 04:20:00 PM
The music industry is not all Grammy smiles and glitter; its closet is a veritable graveyard of skeletons, and when record companies point their collective finger at dot.coms like Napster and yell "Foul!" a hollow ring is heard by the thousands of artists who for decades have been unscrupulously short-changed by some of these very same finger-pointers - Chris Albertson, author's note in Bessie, 2nd ed.
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: Slack on September 21, 2007, 05:35:44 PM
OK Rivers - as long as we are getting heavy.  Even though it is a famous quote - it is a good one. :)

"The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side." Hunter S. Thompson

Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: Rivers on September 24, 2007, 07:28:43 PM
She said "look'a here daddy, don't you raise no sand. I don't ask you 'bout no woman, don't ask me 'bout my man" - Mance Lipscomb, Meet Me In The Bottom, Arhoolie Texas Songster #4, Live at The Cabale
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: uncle bud on September 24, 2007, 07:37:30 PM
She said "look'a here daddy, don't you raise no sand. I don't ask you 'bout no woman, don't ask me 'bout my man" - Mance Lipscombe, Meet Me In The Bottom, Arhoolie Texas Songster #4, Live at The Cabale

No 'e' in Lipscomb. [in editor mode  :P]
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: Rivers on September 24, 2007, 07:42:15 PM
Aaargh, the shame...  :o
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: lindy on September 25, 2007, 08:18:48 AM


I've been fired from lots of jobs but I ain't never missed a meal.

                                           --("Big") Eddie Pennington
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: Bricktown Bob on September 25, 2007, 06:36:48 PM

I ain't gon' get no job, 'cause I ain't starving.
                -- Blind Blake
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: Bricktown Bob on September 25, 2007, 06:43:32 PM
Ain't no heaven and there ain't no burning hell; where I'm going when I die can't nobody tell.
          -- Son House, "My Black Mama," part 1
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: Rivers on October 11, 2007, 08:56:18 PM
From the brands & products list:

Give me Oil of Ninety-Nine, Three-Six, anything! I have done caught my death of cold, Lord have mercy - Bumble Bee Slim, I Done Caught My Death Of Cold
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: GhostRider on October 12, 2007, 07:26:11 AM
From Memphis Minnie and Kansas Joe's "Preacher's Blues"

"Some people say that a preacher won't steal. But he will do more stealin' then I get regular meals"

Alex
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: Rivers on October 14, 2007, 06:15:31 AM
Wow - but Bessie Smith spills fire and fury in Hateful Blues on Columbia Record 14023D. Talk about hymns of hate - Bessie sure is a him-hater on this record. The way she tells what she is going to do with her "butcher" will make trifling fellows catch express trains going at 60 miles an hour. The music is full of hate too. You can almost see hate drip from the piano keys. Every note is a half-note. No quarter for anyone - Chicago defender ad, July 1924
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: Rivers on October 15, 2007, 04:32:36 PM
Ah, don't you just love the purple prose from the old ads. This one snipped from BH's post elsewhere:

The famous Mother of the Blues doesn't want you to ever forget her?that's how much she loves her friends! So we put her picture on her latest record, 'Dream Blues.' On the other side is 'Lost Wandering Blues' by 'Ma.' Accompaniments by Pruitt Twins on those guitars that made Kansas City famous.... This is the first time, to our knowledge, that any artist's picture has ever appeared on a record. Paramount is always first with the features - Chicago Defender ad, 7 June 1924 for Ma Rainey's souvenir record
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: Cooljack on October 16, 2007, 09:30:51 AM
"..Im Thinkin' about the year of 19 and 29..." -

Happy New Year Blues - Lemon Jefferson

I always feel a certain sense of dramatic irony whenever I listen to this song.

Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: Chezztone on October 20, 2007, 04:28:32 PM
Wasn't no use for anybody else to come up talkin' about playin' against him, 'cause they couldn't even do what he was doin' -- all they could do was look and wonder how in the hell he done it. -- Tom Shaw, speaking of Blind Lemon Jefferson.
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: Rivers on October 23, 2007, 10:25:43 AM
I found a note on the floor, it almost sent me off in a trance. She said "It's nothin' that you've done, I'm just leavin' in advance" - Memphis Slim, Empty Room Blues
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: Rivers on October 23, 2007, 09:01:18 PM
I know my doggie when I hear him bark. I can tell my rider if I feel her in the dark - Charley Patton, Banty Rooster Blues
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: dj on October 24, 2007, 03:31:48 PM
"I did more for you than you understand / You can tell by the bullet holes, mama, now here in my hand." - Peetie Wheatstraw, "Ice And Snow Blues" 
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: lindy on October 27, 2007, 08:33:37 AM

Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.

        --attributed to (among others) Frank Zappa and Elvis Costello


Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: Bricktown Bob on November 01, 2007, 09:21:41 AM
That's supposed to be a funny song.
     -- Muddy Waters on "Hoochie Coochie Man," to Dave Van Ronk, as told to Elijah Wald, Escaping the Delta.
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: Bricktown Bob on November 11, 2007, 09:37:40 AM
My baby came to me this morning and said I'm kinda confused
She said "If me and B.B. King was both drownin', which one would you choose?"
And I said "Oh Baby, Oh Baby, Oh Baby, I ain't never heard you play no blues."
        --Steve Goodman, The I Ain't Never Heard You Play No Blues


Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: mississippijohnhurt1928 on November 11, 2007, 11:18:49 AM
"I feel a funny little something easing into my cavity
That's nothin' but cocaine and liquor, to ease the pain, you see."


-Victoria Spivey & Lonnie Johnson "Toothache Blues"
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: Great Bear on November 12, 2007, 02:07:19 PM
"Hersal Thomas was (one of) the finest guys I ever knew...We came up together, in Chicago...He taught me everything I know...He was the master of all pianists in those days...King of the boogie woogie...These rocks the way he would play 'em...Really sad he didn't live...Today he would be king...He knew everything, this boy from Texas...O.K Hersal this is for you, wherever you are."

Dan Burley - Hersal's Rocks
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: Parlor Picker on November 19, 2007, 01:19:12 AM
I am currently reading one of the best books on music I have ever read.  It is "Crosstown Traffic: Jimi Hendrix and Post-War Pop" by Charles Shaar Murray.  Murray writes intelligently, always managing to be objective and is clearly extremely well-informed.  Weenies should not shy away if they are averse to Hendrix (the book is not entirely about him - and what's wrong with Hendrix anyway?), as he also covers such players as Robert Johnson and Charlie Christian.

Amongst many other gems in the book, he has this to say:

"Anybody who can play a musical instrument (guitar, piano, harmonica, saxophone or whatever) can learn, in a comparatively short time, to play something that sounds like the blues.

It'll only be something that sounds like the blues though. To play or sing something which felt like the blues can take a lifetime."

How true!
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: GhostRider on November 19, 2007, 05:10:53 AM
"The way that gal kill up men, the graveyard ain't got much more room"

Last line of Lonnie Johnson's "Low Down St. Louis Blues"

Alex
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: waxwing on November 22, 2007, 12:10:59 PM
Pulled from the one year thank you notice by Mary Lockwood published in young Calvin's local paper:

I'm gonna pack my suitcase and move on up the line
You know I can't sleep for dreamin' with you forever on my mind

Robert Lockwood Jr.

All for now.
John C.
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: uncle bud on November 23, 2007, 01:55:24 PM
Merci beaucoup! -- Muddy Waters shows off his French at the Montreal Jazz Festival


(it was on TV last night...)
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: Rivers on November 27, 2007, 07:32:30 PM
I ask that pawn shop man, "What's them three balls doin' hangin' on that wall?" (He) said, "It's two to one daddy, you don't get your things back out of here at all" - Blind Boy Fuller, Three Ball Blues
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: Bricktown Bob on December 08, 2007, 06:56:37 PM
If the blues was whiskey I'd stay drunk all the time.

     -- Leadbelly, "DeKalb Blues"
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: Rivers on December 16, 2007, 04:58:02 AM
* * *   U p d a t e d   * * *

Added 25 new quotes today for a total of 522. This is a never ending process so please keep them coming.
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: Mr.OMuck on December 23, 2007, 07:09:02 PM
"Martin's got the playability but Gibson's got the LASTability!" Rev. Gary Davis explaining his preference for Gibson guitars because of what he claimed was their stronger build quality and ability to survive the harsh conditions encountered on New York City's streets. As told to Mr. O'Muck 1969
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: unezrider on December 25, 2007, 04:07:36 PM
"...you shoulda heard what i just seen" - bo diddley, 'who do you love?'
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: dj on December 26, 2007, 06:33:56 AM
"God knows.  Nobody knows.  He had no name for it; it was something he had made himself.  Nobody on earth could use it except him.  Nobody would want to, I don't think." - Columbia A & R man Frank Walker, when asked what instrument Washington Phillips played, quoted in   Songsters & Saints by Paul Oliver
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: Coyote Slim on December 26, 2007, 09:16:44 AM
"If I go to Loosiana, mama, Lord, Lord, they'll hang me sho'..."
Skip James "If You Haven't Any Hay"

"Well you know that I love you, that's why you treat me so unkind.
The way that you treat me gonna 'cause me to lose my mind"
-- Johnny Shines, "Evening Sun"

"When I met that woman I was nice and fat
now she got me thin as one of those old alley cats"
Tampa Red "Love Crazy"
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: Mr.OMuck on December 26, 2007, 08:40:34 PM
QUOTATION:   It is from the blues that all that may be called American music derives its most distinctive character.
ATTRIBUTION:   James Weldon Johnson (1871?1938), U.S. author, poet. Black Manhattan, ch. 11 (1930).

QUOTATION:   You can be up to your boobies in white satin, with gardenias in your hair and no sugar cane for miles, but you can still be working on a plantation.
ATTRIBUTION:   Billie Holiday (1915?1959), U.S. blues singer, and William Dufty. Lady Sings the Blues, ch. 11 (1956, rev. 1975).

QUOTATION:   Downtown Manhattan, clear winter noon, and I?ve been up all night, talking, talking, reading the Kaddish aloud, listening to Ray Charles blues shout blind on the phonograph
ATTRIBUTION:   Allen Ginsberg (b. 1926), U.S. poet. Kaddish, sct. 1, Kaddish and Other Poems (1960).

QUOTATION:   Blues is to jazz what yeast is to bread?without it, it?s flat.
ATTRIBUTION:   Carmen McRae (b. 1922), U.S. jazz singer. Speech, July 2, 1980, Newport Jazz Festival, New York City. ?Blues Is a Woman.?

QUOTATION:   The blues was like that problem child that you may have had in the family. You was a little bit ashamed to let anybody see him, but you loved him. You just didn?t know how other people would take it.
ATTRIBUTION:   B.B. King (b. 1925), U.S. blues guitarist. quoted in Sunday Times (London, Nov. 4, 1984).
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: Rivers on December 27, 2007, 05:42:59 PM
Very meaty quotes those, thanks OMuck. Billie Holiday sure had a way with words, I really must read Lady Sings The Blues.

And thanks to everybody who has contributed this past year. That's a pretty good note to go out on, since this thread was entitled Quotes Drive 2007 I'll close it sometime around New Year's Eve, update the database and let it go out slowly, like a good cigar. And then open 'Quotes Drive 2008' of course.

BTW when this thread started there were 432 quotes in the database. By my count we've just hit exactly 532, for the mathematically challenged that's exactly 100 new quotes this year.  ;) That's way beyond what I was expecting. Amazing thing to me was there were very few or no repeats, I can't recall any actually.
Title: Re: Quote Drive 2007
Post by: Rivers on January 02, 2008, 05:54:40 PM
OK it's 2008 already so this topic is no longer topical and is now locked and will add the remainder to the quote generator.

Anyone with new quotes to lay on us please feel free to be first and start a new topic, Quotes 2008 or somesuch. Thanks y'all.
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