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The blues is life itself.

Blues is a natural fact, is something that a fellow lives. If you don't live it you don't have it. Young people have forgotten to cry the blues. Now they talk and get lawyers and things.

The blues is not the creation of a crushed-spirited people. It is the product of a forward-looking, upward-striving people.

The blues comes right back to a person's feelings, to his daily activities in life. But rich people don't know nothing about the blues, please believe me.

Everything comes out in blues music: joy, pain, struggle. Blues is affirmation with absolute elegance. It's about a man and a woman. So the pain and the struggle in the blues is that universal pain that comes from having your heart broken. Most blues songs are not about social statements.

The blues is like a planet. It's an enormous topic. You can't ignore the impact that it has had and continues to have on the whole musical culture. It's a tree that everyone is swinging from. Without it, I don't know where I would be. It's indelible and indispensable.

The blues is the foundation for a lot of things. Things have branched off. It's cool how music grows, but the foundation is always there. It's not going anywhere. The blues is always going to be relevant.

I think it will always be around it just takes one person to make people aware of the blues.

I think the blues will always be around. People need it.

The blues are important primarily because they contain the cultural expression and the cultural response to blacks in America and to the situation that they find themselves in. And contained in the blues is a philosophical system at work. And as part of the oral tradition, this is a way of passing along information.