Topic: Quote Drive 2007

[Rivers]

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

[Rivers]

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

[Great Bear]

"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.

[outfidel]

"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

[Stuart]

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."

[mmpresti]

"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

[mmpresti]

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

[Rivers]

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.

[dj]

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
 

[Johnm]

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

[Johnm]

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

[uncle bud]

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

[dj]

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.

[dj]

"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.

[mmpresti]

"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.