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.
Try taking the horn out of your mouth.
- Miles Davis to John Coltrane, who said he didn't know how to stop a solo
Matter of fact, I put hands on my first electric guitar November 10th, 1960, at three o'clock that Saturday afternoon.
- Gregg Allman
The black strat was just a guitar. It was my guitar: it was the one I used. What can you say? It has earned its keep.
- David Gilmour
Jazz speaks for life. The blues tell the story of life's difficulties.
- Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
The first time I saw him I thought this was a criminal case and he was a criminal, and when he left the court the first time, we thought he was getting away
- A juror, on seeing Tom Waits, who was suing Frito-Lay for using his music
My watch don’t work that well. I don’t show up to all my gigs.
- Charlie Parker
I'm sick to death of people saying we've made 11 albums that sound exactly the same. In fact, we've made 12 albums that sound exactly the same.
- AC/DC's Angus Young
I think in this country we keep returning to blues and country because they're our two indigenous musical forms.
- Jim Morrison, The Doors
If there ever was an indigenous art form, one that is special and peculiar to the United States and represents what we are as a country, I would say that it's jazz
- President Jimmy Carter, White House Jazz Festival, June 18, 1978
I'm sorry that the world didn't know me for 40 years.
- Muddy Waters
I’ve always been in love with that Delta-flavored music the music that came from Mississippi and Memphis and, especially, New Orleans. When I was 14, I was in a wanna-be New Orleans band in Toronto.
- Robbie Robertson, The Band
She had rings on her fingers and bells on her shoes, and I knew without askin' she was into the blues.
- Grateful Dead, Scarlet Begonias
I didn't mean to kill nobody ... I just meant to shoot the sonofa- in the head. Him dying was between him and the Lord.
- R.L. Burnside
I'm a million miles away
- Rory Gallagher, 1973
[John Coltrane] was studying Buddha sometime near the last gig [of his life] and found that there was a chant where you could pound your chest and it would change the sound of your voice. He wanted to get that quiver on the horn, and when he couldn’t get it, he’d put the horn down, beat on his chest and scream into the microphone. People really thought he’d lost his mind then.
- Rashied Ali, drummer for John Coltrane
You're the kinda girl that fits in with my world
- Pink Floyd, "Bike", 1967
A little past noontime, a ‘jake-leg’ preacher said some words over his body and we committed his soul to the earth.
- Rose Eskridge, grave digger's wife, on the burial of Robert Johnson
It’s okay! Gun’s not loaded… see?
- R&B star Johnny Ace's final words
A gentleman is a man who can play the accordion but doesn't.
- Tom Waits, frequent accordion player
Well, I ain't no new messiah, but I'm close enough for rock and roll
- 38 Sepcial, "Rockin’ Into the Night", 1979