Learn to Play 5 minute Guitar Solo!
Blues Licks * Blues Chords
Guitar Guru * Blues Riffs
Bass Guitar * Blues Jam Trax

Wanna make it in blues? Maybe change your name + a few quotes to inspire your music.

Muddy Waters born McKinley Morgenfield
had a magical name. "Muddy" for his roots in fertile Mississippi Delta and "Waters" for the great Mississippi River that spread his music around the world.

Stevie Ray Vaughn
SRV brought a real ray and sunburst to blues music and he died as he lived in a bolt (ray) of lightening.

Howlin Wolf (Chester Burnett)
Howling Wolf was the archtype blues musician, a lone wolf, outcast with a guitar and mean dispostion. His nasty, nasal sound (howlin) was enough to make your skin crawl. Gives me the shivers just thinking about it.

Eric Clapton
Eric Clapton was born to applause... "Clap- ton" as in tons of people clapping at tons of Eric Clapton concerts.

Little Walter
Little Walter played nasty blues harp licks and died in street fight... maybe he just didn't like being called by his real name - Marion!

Robert Johnson
Nothing spectacular about his name... just goes to show it still comes down to the music!

Music Quotes

B.B. King
"Notes are expensive... spend them wisely

Albert Collins
"Simple music is the hardest music to play and blues is simple music."

Brownie McGhee
"The Blues is Life."

Muddy Waters
"My blues are so simple, but so few people can play it right"

Willie Dixon
"It don't make sense you can't make peace."

Charlie Parker
"If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn."

Dexter Gordon
"You gotta have heart in you want to make it in this business."

Horace Silver
"Music is everywhere... you just have to grab it."

Art Blakely
Music washes away the dust of every day life"

Wes Montgomery
"I never practice guitar... from time to time, I just open my guitar case and throw in a piece of raw meat."

I like the girls to match the upholstery of the car.
-Charlie Barnet-

I wish you wouldn't make the strings such an important part of your arrangements because frankly they're only a tax dodge!
-Tommy Dorsey (to arranger Nelson Riddle)-

The outer space beings are my brothers. They sent me here. They already know my music.
-Sun Ra-

I discovered early in life that if you take gym first period, you can go into the wrestling room and sit in the corner and sleep.
-Paul Desmond-

I was very happy and secure until I went into the army. Then I started to feel there was something I should know that I didn't know.
-Bill Evans-

Jazz is the folk music of the machine age.
-Paul Whiteman-

As long as I've been playing, they never say I done anything. They always say that some white guy did it.
-Miles Davis-

I don't expect people who listen to Emerson, Lake, and Palmer to come hear me. I accept that reality.
-Cecil Taylor-

Are big bands coming back? Sure, every football season.
-Woody Herman-

Blues is to jazz what yeast is to bread-without it, it's flat.
-Carmen McCrae-

Playing "bop" is like playing Scrabble with all the vowels missing.
-Duke Ellington-

My feeling is, music is a more eloquent international language than Coca-Cola or McDonalds.
-Paul Horn-

I don't want no drummer. I set the tempo.
-Bessie Smith-

I am the world's laziest writer.
-Oscar Peterson-

If someone has been escaping reality, I don't expect him to dig my music.
-Charles Mingus -

It's taken me all my life to learn what not to play.
-Dizzy Gillespie-

I don't mind being the butt of a joke-if it's a funny joke.
-Kenny G.-

Those people were mavericks, the only person who wanted them was me. I mean, was Gene Krupa hard to get? Was Bunny Berigan hard to get?
-Benny Goodman-

I spent a lot of time playing in miserable places that were not a lot of fun. Somebody once said it is character building and I was like My character is just fine!
-Diana Krall-