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.
Everyone talks about rock these days... the problem is they forget about the roll.
- Keith Richards
She was very dangerous, that girl.
- Little Richard on Janis Joplin
"[Big Mama Thornton] was a wonderful blues singer, with a great moaning style. But it was as much her appearance, as her blues style that influenced the writing of 'Hound Dog' and the idea that we wanted her to growl it."
- Mike Stoller, on writing Hound Dog Taylor for Big Mama Thornton
When I'm writing songs, I'm just trying to make something that feels good. It just has to feel good. And a lot of times the words are more about the vowels. And the vowel sounds, than they are the actual words.
- Dan Auerbach, The Black Keys
Time isn’t the main thing. It’s the only thing.
- Miles Davis
Jazz is not just music, it's a way of life, it's a way of being, it's a way of thinking.
- Nina Simone
"[Professor Longhair] is the Bach of rock"
- Allen Toussaint
"I'd like to do a song of great social and political import"
- Janis Joplin
A mind is like a parachute. It doesn't work if it is not open.
- Frank Zappa
It was a word I made up about shagging. As in, "I'm off home for some Ummagumma."
- Emo Moore, on the origin of the name of Pink Floyd's fourth album, Ummagumma
It is a great life, this life of music.
- Ahmet Ertegun, Atlantic Records
Hard Rock has unquestionably hit its all-time low
- Rolling Stone's review of AC/DC's first release
Anticipated [Rap Music]? I damn well invented it! And I wasn't the only one. Talking rhyming lyrics to a groove is something you'd hear in the clubs everywhere from Macon to Memphis.
- Johnny "Guitar" Watson
We must make people love each other.
- James Brown
Paid his dues playing the blues, he claims that he wrote the Blue Suede Shoes
- The Beastie Boys, Johnny Ryall
Ain't studdin ya, one monkey don't stop no show
- Bobby Rush
Take you a glass of water, make it against the law. See how good the water tastes when you can't have any at all.
- John Fogerty, Bootleg, Bayou Country (1969)
I knew Charlie Parker, and he gave us such a gift with his music. He put so much into so little space.
- Harry Belafonte
If Charlie Parker were a gunslinger, there's be a whole lot of dead copycats.
- Charles Mingus
Music is a world within itself
- Stevie Wonder