Topic: Quote Drive 2007

[natterjack]

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

[Bunker Hill]

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.

[natterjack]

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.

[Rivers]

* * *   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!

[Great Bear]

"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

[uncle bud]

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

[dj]

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

[dj]

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 

[Bunker Hill]

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]

[Bill Roggensack]

I've had the blues so long they done turned into the blacks. - Yank Rachell

Source:  http://www.mandolindy.com/yank
 

[lindy]

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

[GhostRider]

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

[Rivers]

"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

[Coyote Slim]

"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"

[dj]

"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