Jimmy Rushing

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.

Keep searching for that sound you hear in your head until it becomes a reality.

Breathe…. breathe a lot!

Jazz music today is from the head and not the heart.

The hippest thing you can do is not play at all. Just listen.

I don’t care if a dude is purple with green breath as long as he can swing.

I, of course, wanted to play real jazz. When we played pop tunes, and naturally we had to, I wanted those pops to kick! Not loud and fast, understand, but smoothly and with a definite punch.

Kinship doesn’t come from skin color. It’s in your soul and your mind.

He knows I rip him off every day. He’s the godfather for me. Nobody can say they aren’t influenced by what Stevie Wonder has done.

Ideologies separate us. Art brings us together.

Early on, I figured out that when the top of a guitar is vibrating and a string is vibrating, you’ve got a conflict. One of them has got to stop, and it can’t be the string, because that’s making the sound. So in 1934, I asked the Larson Brothers—Chicago instrument makers—to build me a guitar with a half-inch-thick maple top and no f-holes. They thought I was crazy.

I like an element of chaos in music. That feeling is the best thing ever.

It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.

Just allow your feelings to go with the music and you’ll find yourself carried along by it fairly quickly.

Women bring something different to an instrument if they are respectful of their feminine aesthetic.

Music used to be essential and meaningful, but now it’s disposable.