Muddy The Waters Quotes & Sayings

The workroom radio, tuned to FM 88.9, emitted Muddy Waters's throaty warbling. A rez station, WOJB did its best to hit every level of musical taste. Absolute bite-ya-in-the-ass blues was aired only during the wee hours.

Tracker's favorite time and music. — Mardi Oakley Medawar

Memphis was almost like going to California. Beale Street was the black man's street. — Muddy Waters

If I had a million dollars, I just wouldn't just completely set back. I'd have to get out there and show my face to all these good people who like me, I have to get out there and show my face. The only thing that would set me back if I get sick or something or pass away, that's all you can do about that you know. But as long as I got my health goin' pretty good, I'll show up around here. — Muddy Waters

The thing about San Francisco is that it has this kind of magical quality. — Muddy Waters

I want you to learn the lesson of the lotus. This flower springs forth from muddy waters. It raises its delicate petals to the sun and perfumes the world while, at the same time, its roots cling to the elemental muck, the very essence of the mortal experience. Without that soil, the flower would wither and die. — Colleen Houck

There had to be the dark and muddy waters so that the sun could have something to background its flashing glory. — Betty Smith

I was staying with my sister and messing around with the guitar every day for my own amusement. Then she took me around and introduced me to Muddy Waters, Jimmy Rogers, Little Walter, and the first time I saw that onstage, it inspired me to play. I thought that was the world. — Otis Rush

Lightnin' Hopkins taught us, "the rubber on a wheel is faster than the rubber on a heel" and Muddy Waters taught us "you don't have to be the best one; just be a good 'un" .. that just about says it all, always strive to be a good 'un ... — Billy F. Gibbons

I went to school, but they didn't give you too much schooling because just as soon as you was big enough, you get to working in the fields. I guess I was a big boy for my age. — Muddy Waters

The hippo of recollection stirred in the muddy waters of the mind. — Terry Pratchett

Anyone who brings up gender in the workplace is wading into deep and muddy waters. The subject itself presents a paradox, forcing us to acknowledge differences while trying to achieve the goal of being treated the same. — Sheryl Sandberg

At night in the country, you'd be surprised how that music carries. You could hear my guitar way before you get to the house, and you could hear the peoples hollerin' and screamin'. — Muddy Waters

If I sang the way I talk it would sound like "Tommy Steele sings Muddy Waters!" — James Hunter

Our little house was way back in the country. We had one house close to us, and hell the next one would've been a mile. If you got sick, you could holler and wouldn't nobody hear you. — Muddy Waters

The blues had a baby and they called it rock and roll. — Muddy Waters

I've always wanted the sound of Muddy Waters' early records - only louder — Eric Clapton

Oh, I started out young. They handed me a cotton sack when I was about 8 years old. Give me a little small one, tell me to fill it up. I never did like the farm but I was out there with my grandmother, didn't want to get away from around her too far. — Muddy Waters

The best musicians in the world were raised on the same kind of music I was raised on and that is black, soulful, authoritative, ultra-tight, ferocious, uppity, defiant music that from the Howlin' Wolf, the Muddy Waters, the Lightnin' Hopkins, the Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, and Little Richard. — Ted Nugent

I found my God in music and the arts, with writers like Hermann Hesse, and musicians like Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, and Little Walter. In some way, in some form, my God was always there, but now I have learned to talk to him. — Eric Clapton

My favorite country blues player was Big Bill Broonzy. City blues was Freddie King, but I liked them all - Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Ralph Willis, Lonnie Johnson, Brownie McGhee and the three Kings, B.B., Albert and Freddie. Jazz-wise, I listened to Django, Barney Kessel and Wes Montgomery. — Alvin Lee

There was a time when I had the blues - I mean I really had it bad. I couldn't pay my light bill and I couldn't pay my rent and I really had the blues. But today I can pay my rent and I can pay the light bill and I still got the blues. So I must been born with 'em ... That's my religion - the blues is my religion. — Muddy Waters

Muddy Waters he play in the river Joan Rivers she play in the mud Swami guru play in a big salad bowl Counting lettuce and chewing his cud — Tom Robbins

I thought leaving you would be easy,
just walking out the door
but I keep getting pinned against it
with my legs around your waist and it's like
my lips want you like my lungs want air,
it's just what they where born to do so
I am sitting at work thinking of you
cutting vegetables in my kitchen
your hair in my shower drain
your fingers on my spine in the morning
while we listen to Muddy Waters, I know
you will never be the one I call home
but the way you talk about poems
like marxists talk of revolution
it makes me want to keep trying.
I'm still looking for reasons to love you.
I'm still looking for proof you love me. — Clementine Von Radics

The first band I identified with from Chicago was the Muddy Waters band. — Eric Clapton

I wanted to definitely be a musician or a good preacher or a heck of a baseball player. I couldn't play ball too good - I hurt my finger, and I stopped that. I couldn't preach, and well, all I had left was getting into the music thing. — Muddy Waters

What Muddy Waters did for us is what we should do for others. It's the old thing, what you want written on your tombstone as a musician; HE PASSED IT ON. — Keith Richards

Muddy Waters, I suppose, was my first great hero. You know, every boy wants to be a guitar player, and Muddy Waters was just the king. He was the King Bee. He was it. — Hugh Laurie

He slept and in his sleep he saw his friends again and they were coming downriver on muddy floodwaters, Hoghead and the City Mouse and J-Bone and Bearhunter and Bucket and Boneyard and J D Davis and Earl Solomon, all watching him where he stood on the shore. They turned gently in their rubber bullboat, bobbing slightly on the broad and ropy waters, their feet impinging in the floor of the thing with membraneous yellow tracks. They glided past somberly. Out of a lightless dawn receding, past the pale daystar. A fog more obscure closed away their figures gone a sadder way by psychic seas across the Tarn of Acheron. From a rock in the river he waved them farewell but they did not wave back. — Cormac McCarthy

The lotus grows in muddy waters but this flower does not show any trace of it: So we have to live in the world. — B.K.S. Iyengar

Muddy Waters was, like, the king! He had a lot of adopted sons and daughters. I was just happy to be one of them. — Robert Cray

You get a heck of a sound from the church. Can't you hear it in my voice? — Muddy Waters

I was always singing the way I felt, and maybe I didn't exactly know it, but I just didn't like the way things were down there-in Mississippi. — Muddy Waters

So I went out and bought Hard Again by Muddy Waters. That was a big learning curve. I listened to that album again and again and again. James Cotton was the harmonica player on that album. — Sonny Terry

All the really great records or people who made them somehow came from Memphis or Louisiana or somewhere along the Mississippi River ... And singers like Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters gave me the feeling that they were right there, standing by the river. — John Fogerty

Sybil and Nancy leaned over to catch a glimpse of the sun sparkling on the muddy waters of the River Plate. The skyscrapers stood proudly in clumps and Sybil assumed that the patches of green were parks. In no time the plane was screeching to a halt and they had arrived in Buenos Aires. — Phyllis Goodwin

The Missouri is, perhaps, different in appearance and character from all other rivers in the world; there is a terror in its manner which is sensibly felt, the moment we enter its muddy waters from the Mississippi. — George Catlin

I rambled all the time. I was just like that, like a rollin' stone. — Muddy Waters

Milton puts it most profoundly when he says, Well knows he who uses to consider, that our faith and knowledge thrives by exercise, as well as our limbs and complexion. Truth is compared in Scripture to a streaming fountain; if her waters flow not in a perpetual progression, they sicken into a muddy pool of conformity and tradition. A man may be a heretic in the truth; and if he believe things only because his pastor says so, or the Assembly so determines, without knowing other reason, though his belief be true, yet the very truth he holds becomes his heresy. In other words, the power of truth lies not in abstract propositions but in the understanding and willful application of truth by living, breathing persons which can occur only in the context of liberty. — Karen Swallow Prior

The symbol of the Lotus flower gives a precious teaching that can inspire us to deal with life in the best possible way. Its roots take nourishment from muddy waters and yet bloom in full delicacy and beauty on the surface. Similarly, to have a positive mindset is a beautiful quality; nonetheless to be transformational it needs to be rooted firmly in reality to then blossom with the value which can be created from the muddy problem(s) — Dorotea Brandin

Baumeister's point is that we have a deep need to understand violence and cruelty through what he calls "the myth of pure evil." Of this myth's many parts, the most important are that evildoers are pure in their evil motives (they have no motives for their actions beyond sadism and greed); victims are pure in their victimhood (they did nothing to bring about their victimization); and evil comes from outside and is associated with a group or force that attacks our group. Furthermore, anyone who questions the application of the myth, who dares muddy the waters of moral certainty, is in league with evil. — Jonathan Haidt

All the muddy waters of my life cleared up when I gave myself to Christ. — Mickey Rooney

I got that first record out, it came out in '47 ... Then my name began to ring around. I began to take over. From that point, I tell you, Chicago was in my hand, all the more time that those guys had to listen to me. — Muddy Waters

Saturday night is your big night. Everybody used to fry up fish and have one hell of a time. Find me playing till sunrise for 50 cents and a sandwich. And be glad of it. And they really liked the low-down blues. — Muddy Waters

He has attempted to muddy the waters, but I think anyone that watched the battle that we had - you know, there was a time for choosing, as [Ronald] Reagan put it, where there was a battle over amnesty. And some chose, like Sen.[Marco] Rubio, to stand with Barack Obama and Chuck Schumer and support a massive amnesty plan. — Ted Cruz

When I was a kid, we didn't have any blues stations. I never heard Howlin' Wolf or Muddy Waters or any of those people until the Stones had come along, and I took it upon myself to find out who these people were that they were covering. — Tom Petty

Those original, black, spirited, defiant, rebellious musical masters. Chuck Berry was one of the first masters of Les Paul's new electric guitar; he pretty much laid down the gauntlet, and I don't think anybody's ever beat him since. Way before the British Invasion, I was tuned into the black guys that created the British Invasion. Without Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters, Robert Johnson, Lightnin' Hopkins, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry and the Motown hits, there would be no Beatles. — Ted Nugent

At the Muddy Waters thing, I played the first song by myself on an acoustic guitar. I thought that was great that y'all did that tribute to Muddy Waters. I had a real good time. — Gregg Allman

Isn't my music the last of the real rhythm and blues? Isn't it great? It's because of my musicians, we were weaned on Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, all the founding fathers, the gods of thunder, who invented the foundation and the pulse of the greatest music in the world! — Ted Nugent

Durga wore a simple sea-green dress and a lei of lotus flowers ... "Take this," it has no special power except that the blooms will not fade, but it will serve a purpose on your voyage. I want you to learn the lesson of the lotus. This flower springs forth from muddy waters. It raises its delicate petals to the sun and perfumes the world while, at the same time, its roots cling to the elemental muck, the very essence of the mortal experience. Without that soil, the flower would wither and die." She placed the lei over my neck. "Dig down and grow strong roots, my daughter, for you will stretch forth, break out of the waters and find peace on the calm surface at last. You will discover that if you hadn't stretched, you would have drowned in the deep, never to blossom or share your gift with others. — Colleen Houck

It was Muddy Waters who took the Delta blues north to Chicago, electrified the sound, and changed the course of popular music as we know it. That's pretty much the judgment of history, and it is mine as well. — Tim Cahill

Did Muddy Waters play an acoustic? Well of course he did. But did he turn his back on being able to plug it in and play louder? No, he plugged in and turned it up and got miles and miles ahead of the game in one fateful act of just plugging in. — Billy Gibbons

I have no problem with religion, and I grew up with a strong curiosity about spiritual matters, but my searching took me away from church and community worship to the internal journey. Before my recovery began, I found my God in music and the arts, with writers like Hermann Hesse, and musicians like Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, and Little Walter. — Eric Clapton

They just said, 'Roll the tape.' No rehearsal or nothing ... Muddy [Waters] didn't come in and say 'I wanna rehearse.' He used to look at me and say 'Let's just play the blues. That's all you need to do. — Buddy Guy

That's where my influences lie, in the blues with people like Muddy Waters and Tina Turner. At first I didn't really like the idea of working with synthesizers but now I think they're fun, there are no restrictions. Not that I understand how they work. — Vince Clarke

I was messing around with the harmonica ... but I was 13 before I got a real good note out of it. — Muddy Waters

My own musical background is based in the blues, and in classical composition. I grew up listening to Muddy Waters, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Beethoven and Bach. — Frederick Lenz

Nietzsche lampooned the romantics of his day (a half century later), noting that "they muddy the waters to make them look deep. — Robert Solomon

I wanted to get out of Mississippi in the worst way. Go back? What I want to go back for? — Muddy Waters

There's no way in the world I can feel the same blues the way I used to. When I play in Chicago, I'm playing up-to-date, not the blues I was born with. People should hear the pure blues - the blues we used to have when we had no money. — Muddy Waters

That Mississippi sound, that Delta sound is in them old records. You can hear it all the way through. — Muddy Waters

While I thus cogitate in disquiet and perplexity, half submerged in dark waters of a well in an Arabian oasis, I suddenly hear a voice from the background of my memory, the voice of an old Kurdish nomad: If water stands motionless in a pool it grows stale and muddy, but when it moves and flows it becomes clear: so, too, man in his wanderings. Whereupon, as if by magic, all disquiet leaves me. I begin to look upon myself with distant eyes, as you might look at the pages of a book to read a story from them; and I begin to understand that my life could not have taken a different course. For when I ask myself, 'What is the sum total of my life?' somthing in me seems to answer, 'You have set out to exchange one world for another-to gain a new world for yourself in exchange for an old one which you never really possessed.' And I know with startling clarity that such an undertaking might indeed take an entire lifetime. — Muhammad Asad

All the kids made their own git-tars. Made mine out of a box and bit of stick for a neck. Couldn't do much with it, but that's how you learn. — Muddy Waters

Of course that was my idol, Son House. I think he did a lot for the Mississippi slide down there. — Muddy Waters

I don't have anything to say about the guy [Muddy Waters], you know. Treat me all right. But I can this: they are jealous hearted, you know. Are jealous hearted musicians, you know. See, if you can't do like your songs, get kinda jealous of you. Like you, like they think you better than them and all that, but I don't fool with those kind of peoples, you know. I ain't got the time. — Howlin' Wolf

I been in the blues all my life. I'm still delivering 'cause I got a long memory. — Muddy Waters

It made me sick - my name's Keith Richards. It hardly makes it against Howlin' Wolf or Muddy Waters, does it? On my first guitar I had Boy Blue written - just pathetic. But that was as good as I got at the time. — Keith Richards

The vibrations he felt in his sleep had nothing to do with his soul easing out of his body as he dreamily thought; they came solely from the weight and motion of the freight train rolling north to deliver fuel, furniture and other items having no relevance to Elijah's life or his dreaming. On the metal rail his arm itched like a nose with a feeling that something bad was about to happen. In another life the sound of the train would have been reminiscent of certain songs by Muddy Waters or even Bruce Springsteen but not in this one. In this life the sound stabbed viciously against the night exactly like a human being demonstrating flawless disrespect for the life of another human being.
from short story ELIJAH'S SKIN — Aberjhani

The blacks have their parties, hustle a little liquor, get some things together, and I used to play for those peoples. They'd come get me on time, but they wouldn't bring me back on time ... Done picked cotton all day, play all night long, then pick cotton all day the next day before I could get a chance to sleep. — Muddy Waters

I'd play whenever I could get my hands on an electric guitar; I was trying to pick up rock'n'roll riffs and electric blues-the latest Muddy Waters. I'd spend hours and hours on the same track, back again, and back again. — Keith Richards

For groups like the Rolling Stones names like Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf were exotic inspirations. For Siegel-Schwall they were the guys that played with them on 43rd Street. — Lin Brehmer

Going to Chicago was like going out of the world ... — Muddy Waters

A person of faith who shares conservative values and who says very clearly that climate change is real - and here's why we have to care about it - I think that we "unicorns" do pose a threat to people who want to muddy the waters and keep others in the dark. — Katharine Hayhoe