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.
This is just a tree of life. This record is the watering hole.
- Tom Waits, on The Rolling Stones' "Exile on Main Street"
Okay, the Allman Brothers Band...
- Michael Ahern, At Fillmore East
All musicians are subconsciously mathematicians
- Thelonious Monk
I never really knew where I wanted to end up; for a long time I thought I just wanted to do country blues
- Robert Plant
One chord is fine. Two chords are pushing it. Three chords and you're into Jazz.
- Musician/Songwriter Lou Reed
Being the Queen is not all about singing, and being a diva is not all about singing. It has much to do with your service to people. And your social contributions to your community and your civic contributions as well.
- Aretha Franklin
While we're doing this blues thing, we're gonna play an old Bobby Bland song for ya -- actually it's a T-Bone Walker Song...
- Duane Allman, "At Fillmore East"
Jerry Lee Lewis was the devil, Jesus was an architect previous to his career as a prophet
- Ministry, "Jesus Built My Hotrod", 1991
The history of jazz can be told in four words: Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker
- Miles Davis, Time Magazine, 1973
We tune because we care for your ears
- Jimi Hendrix
I have often thought that if there had been a good rap group around in those days, I might have chosen a career in music instead of politics.
- Richard M. Nixon, 37th president of the United States
I'm talkin' about the blues. You talkin' about monkey junk.
- Son House
Paul Butterfield's harmonica sorties against the surging heavily amplified rhythm of drums, electric guitar, organ and bass are without parallel in blues or jazz.
- Robert Shelton, The New York Times
When I was a boy, 10 years old, I got a paper route and it got bigger than I could handle because my customers liked me so much. I just delivered papers the best I could and minded my business, the same way I play my horn now. But a lot of the people I meet now make me sick.
- Miles Davis
Little Red Hen said to the little red rooster, you don't come round my chicken shack as much as you use to... roosta
- Taj Mahal
He does my tunes how I hear them in my head when I'm writing
- Bob Dylan on Jerry Garcia
You can do it your own way… if it’s done just how I say.
- Metallica, "Eye of the Beholder"
The assassinations were in much more poor taste than our band. We actually respect the Kennedy family… When JFK was assassinated, when Martin Luther King was assassinated, when RFK was assassinated, the American Dream was assassinated… our name is actually homage to the American Dream.
- Dead Kennedys’ guitarist East Bay Ray on the band’s name.
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.
- Keith Richards
I'm sorry that the world didn't know me for 40 years.
- Muddy Waters