Folk Songs Quotes - Page 2

• some genius of the South
  With blood-hot eyes and cane-lipped scented mouth,
  Surprised in making folk-songs from soul sounds.

  Jean Toomer

  Song, Eye, Blood

  Jean Toomer (1988). “The Collected Poems of Jean Toomer”, p.27, UNC Press Books

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• Folk songs are evasive-the truth about life, and life is more or less a lie, but then again that's exactly the way we want it to be. We wouldn't be comfortable with it any other way. A folk song has over a thousand faces and you must meet them all if you want to play this stuff. A folk song might vary in meaning and it might not appear the same from one moment to the next. It depends on who's playing and who's listening.

  Bob Dylan

  Song, Lying, Play

  Bob Dylan (2011). “Chronicles”, p.57, Simon and Schuster

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• When I was 19 I went to art school. I had six months of teaching myself to play baritone ukulele under my belt so I was sort of a novice folkie... I was singing folk songs at that time.

  Joni Mitchell

  Song, Art, Teaching

  Interview with Joe Smith, jonimitchell.com. November 3, 1986.

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• What I'm doing is basically the same as Bob Dylan did with folk songs and Woody Guthrie songs, the same as folk music's always done. I'm not going to sing about ploughing, but I'll write a song that sounds like it should be about ploughing.

  Justin Townes Earle

  Song, Writing, Bob

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• It's like a little folk song. I think it might've been Harry Belafonte or someone like that who did it. And "Merry Christmas, Everybody" by Slade, which is a rock group - a rock-pop group who are very big over there.

  Nick Lowe

  Song, Merry Christmas, Thinking

  "Nick Lowe Brings His 'Quality Holiday Revue' To America". "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. December 22, 2014.

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• Blues songs, like folk songs, are a continuous stream, and catching the continuities and thefts is part of what puts meaning and complexity into it - also part of the fun of it all.

  Richard F. Thomas

  Song, Fun, Catching

  Source: projects.iq.harvard.edu

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• One of the songs that stayed in my head that I really considered a lot was an old folk song called 'John Brown' - not the abolitionist John Brown, but the one that Bob Dylan has covered and sung before. It's about a boy coming home from the Civil War, or maybe World War I even, and about his Mother seeing him all destroyed.

  Quentin Tarantino

  Mother, Song, War

  Source: www.coupdemainmagazine.com

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• A brilliant 1989 album, Oh Mercy; some career retrospectives; and two albums of American folk songs, with just Bob Dylan and his guitar and harmonica. All that culminated in the Grammy-winning comeback album, Time Out of Mind (1997). Once again, just as Dylan seemed to be out of it, he was back at the top of his game.

  Bob Dylan

  Song, Winning, Games

  Source: www.thedailybeast.com

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• Every week, Dennis Day sang an old Irish folk song. And next day in the fields, I'd be singing that song if I was working in the fields.

  Johnny Cash

  Song, Next Day, Singing

  Source: wrvo.org

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• A song stylist is, like, to take an old folk song like "Delia's Gone" and do a modern white man's version of it.

  Johnny Cash

  Song, Men, White Man

  Source: wrvo.org

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• I am a firm believer in playing the type of music that compliments the song the best. If it's a folk song make it sound like one. If it's a rock song make it sound like one, if it's a rap song take it off the record.

  William Clark Green

  Song, Rap, Rocks

  Source: countrymusicrocks.net

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• We had various kinds of tape-recorded concerts and popular music. But by the end of the flight what we listened to most was Russian folk songs. We also had recordings of nature sounds: thunder, rain, the singing of birds. We switched them on most frequently of all, and we never grew tired of them. It was as if they returned us to Earth.

  Anatoly Berezovoy

  Song, Rain, Tired

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• The chief contribution made by white men of the Americas to the folk songs of the world ——- the cowboy songs of Texas and the West ——- are rhythmed to the walk, the trot, and the gallop of horses.

  J. Frank Dobie

  Song, Horse, Cowboy

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• There are no bridges in folk songs because the peasants died building them.

  Eugene Chadbourne

  Song, Bridges, Building

  "The Billboard book of rock arranging". Book by Mark Michaels, May 1, 1990.

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• My mum's family would all get together, with guitars, harmonica, mandolins and upright bass and play old blues and folk songs. That was normal to me.

  Dan Auerbach

  Song, Guitar, Play

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• Be serious. Folk songs are serious. That's what Pete Seeger told me. 'Arlo, I only wanna tell you one thing. Folk songs are serious.' And I said, 'Right.'

  Arlo Guthrie

  Song, Serious, Said

  Comment during the track "The Story of Reuben Clamzo" on the album "One Night", 1978.

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• You can't trust folk songs. They always sneak up on you.

  Terry Pratchett

  Song, Folks, Sneak

  Terry Pratchett (2010). “Witches Abroad: (Discworld Novel 12)”, p.79, Random House

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• I guess all songs is folk songs. I never heard no horse sing them.

  Big Bill Broonzy

  Song, Horse, Heard

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• If you told the truth, that was all well and good and if you told the un-truth, well, that's still well and good. Folk songs had taught me that.

  Bob Dylan

  Song, Taught, Folks

  Bob Dylan (2011). “Chronicles”, p.37, Simon and Schuster

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• It was Rick's Rubin idea to have the 'Brooklyn' verse repeat. It already was a story, but having that made it a folk song. Instead of this rambling march of verses, Rick understands that music needs hooks. You need that repeated chorus, that everyone can sing along to.

  Scott Avett

  Song, Writing, Ideas

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• People thought me a bit strange at first; a blond haired, blue-eyed Norwegian who sang Mexican folk songs, but I used it to my advantage and got a job. And so the music became my ticket to education.

  David Soul

  Education, Song, Jobs

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• People were saying that Southern folk song was dead, that the land that had produced American jazz, the blues, the spirituals, the mountain ballads and the work songs had gone sterile.

  Alan Lomax

  Song, Land, People

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• Yes, I heard my people singing!-in the glow of parlor coal-stove and on summer porches sweet with lilac air, from choir loft and Sunday morning pews-and my soul was filled with their harmonies. Then, too, I heard these songs in the very sermons of my father, for in the Negro's speech there is much of the phrasing and rhythms of folk-song. The great, soaring gospels we love are merely sermons that are sung; and as we thrill to such gifted gospel singers as Mahalia Jackson, we hear the rhythmic eloquence of our preachers, so many of whom, like my father, are masters of poetic speech.

  Paul Robeson

  Summer, Song, Sweet

  Paul Robeson (1998). “Here I Stand”, p.15, Beacon Press

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• Ralph Stanley is like an uncle to us and now that all my uncles are gone, Ralph's singing is even more precious. This album of classic folk songs is one of his best.

  Garrison Keillor

  Song, Uncles, Singing

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• I play a couple basic folks songs and break them down. I did that on a six string. I can't recall all the songs on it. There's some finger picking on it.

  Roger McGuinn

  Song, Couple, Play

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