We keep a database of awesome hand-picked quotes from a variety of authors, musicians, and key people about music, soul, jazz, musicianship, guitars and all things music! Every order you receive from our shop, find a fun new music quote on the bottom of your packing slip! Below are some of our favorites.
If you can’t write your song in half an hour, you’re in trouble – which is always true.
- Garth Hudson, The Band
I was playing soft while Bobby sang the blues
- Janis Joplin
Not that I'm playing it great, but still I oughtta still be able to hear it, know what I mean?
- Janis Joplin, Me & Bobby McGee outtake
We should challenge ourselves. It makes us stronger, gives us clearer insight -- better perception.
- Alice Coltrane
Buddy Guy, an auto mechanic by day, a self-taught musician (who pulled wires from a window screen to make his first guitar), is, by general consensus, the finest blues guitarist in the city, if not in the jazz world.
- "Chicago, an Extraordinary Guide" by Jory Graham, 1967
If you're watching me and Johnny Winter, the show was MENAT to be played in black and white
- Muddy Waters
Mother, did it need to be so high?
- Pink Floyd, Mother, 1979
You mean what do I do every day? I fool around with old cars and my boat. I’m working on my boat right now. I can’t wait till I get back home to Florida so I can go fishing. Gonna catch me a big one!
- Bo Diddley
I gave you seven children and now you wanna give 'em back.
- B.B. King
Sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself.
- Miles Davis
I sold the last horse that we had. Made about fifteen dollars for him, gave my grandmother $7.50, I kept $7.50 and paid about $2.50 for that guitar. It was a Stella.
- Muddy Waters
The blues tells a story.
- John Lee Hooker
I'm tired of y'all playing dress-up and trying to sing them old country songs
- Sturgill Simpson
Including, for your delight, Cosmic Kiddies, English Roadies, Children with the Answers, Cooking Italians, Presidents of Recording Companies, Acrobatics and Displays, The Odd Sane Dog, The Space Choir, Assorted Sound Freaks, and All Elements of the Truth.
- Joe Cocker's Mad Dogs & Englishmen Gatefold
Everybody understands the blues.
- Albert King
I don't need to hang records on the wall, I just want you babe and that's all
- Steve Marriott, Humble Pie, "Say No More"
I work five long years for one woman, and she had the, nerve to kick me out
- Blues Pianist Eddie Boyd, "Five Long Years", 1952
It’s a wonderful thing the young have when they get on a roll. We were running on momentum and adrenaline.
- Elton John, 2014 Rolling Stone interview on making 'Goodbye Yellow Brick Road'
Time isn’t the main thing. It’s the only thing.
- Miles Davis
I found my calling in the back bin of a dark, dusty record store…
- Dave Grohl