About the Blues!
"Well it's played from the heart. It's played from the soul. The real inner man. It's the spirit of him playing his inner feelings through an instrument. But it's pain and hurt."
About Robert Johnson!
"I was with Memphis Slim. We was in Paris. He didn't like to be around him. He said RJ would go to cussin' God. He was at some of those roadhouses when he played, outside of Memphis, western Arkansas and different places. Sunnyland Slim, I've heard him talk some of the same talk. Not about the devil, but Memphis Slim said he would talk so much nasty talk and down God almighty so much that he would be scared to be around him, and a lot of people would leave the juke joints and go out of the house because he was so devilish, talking against God."
"You hear it more than just that. You read it and you hear it. Pack with the devil down at the crossroads."
About Sonny Boy II!
"Now Rice Miller, what I loved about him was, he played good and he blowed with his nose, the harmonica and all that. I remember that from when I was a little kid, and my daddy took me to see him."
About Muddy Waters!
"He just slashed through it a little more than some bands. He wasn't much of a guitar player."
About the South!
"Well, there was two reasons blacks left the south. One reason was the oppression. And in Chicago, Detroit and the cities there was less oppression. You wasn't on the plantation. The north had the reputation of being a little more liberal towards blacks. There's racism all the time. It never, ever stopped, even today."About blacks and the Blues!"We was doing a tour with B.B.King in Europe and BB was doing an interview and he was saying in the big concerts at the Fillmore West or the House of Blues or whatever, you'd have two thousand whites and 8 or 9 blacks. But now it's changing. You've got a thousand whites and you might have a hundred blacks now."
"Some people feel like we, the mainstay blues players like myself and Mr. Arnold here and Otis Rush, people feel like we're really the traitors. They say 'well, you know how they treated you, and you're still singing that old downtrodden stuff'."
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