Holding the Note Quotes

“Guy puts it more simply: “Funny thing about the blues—you play ’em ’cause you got ’em. But, when you play ’em, you lose ’em.”
― David Remnick, Holding the Note: Profiles in Popular Music

“In the sixties, when Jimi Hendrix went to hear him play at a blues workshop, Hendrix brought along a reel-to-reel recorder and shyly asked Guy if he could tape him; anyone with ears could hear Buddy Guy’s influence in Hendrix’s playing—”
― David Remnick, Holding the Note: Profiles in Popular Music

“The way Guy sees it, he is like one of those aging souls who find themselves the last fluent speaker of an obscure regional language. In conversation, he has a habit of recalling the names of all the blues players who have died in recent years: Otis Rush, Koko Taylor, Etta James, James Cotton, Bobby Bland, and many others. “All of ’em gone.”
― David Remnick, Holding the Note: Profiles in Popular Music

“Beyoncé may have overstepped on one occasion, but she knew the score. A singer like her, who can provide flawless versions of both “Precious Lord” and “Bootylicious,” understands the variousness of her roots and the specificity of her debts. “The soulfulness comes from the gospel,” she once said. “It comes from Aretha, who listened to all of that, who sang in the church.”
― David Remnick, Holding the Note: Profiles in Popular Music

“Respect’ is not just a song to Aretha. It’s the mantra for her life.”
― David Remnick, Holding the Note: Profiles in Popular Music

“As a girl, Aretha was thoroughly absorbed in the church life of New Bethel and in the cultural life of her living room, which, at times, seemed to represent the epicenter and genealogy of African American music. Sitting on the stairs, she watched Art Tatum and Nat Cole play the piano. Oscar Peterson, Duke Ellington, Della Reese, Ella Fitzgerald, Billy Eckstine, and Lionel Hampton came to visit.”
― David Remnick, Holding the Note: Profiles in Popular Music

“Aretha’s father, Clarence LaVaughn Franklin, was the most famous Black preacher of his day, and by far the most profound influence on the course of her life. He was born in 1915 and grew up in Sunflower County, in the Mississippi Delta. This was the same landscape that bred Robert Johnson, Son House, Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, and Fannie Lou Hamer. B.B. King, another Delta neighbor,”
― David Remnick, Holding the Note: Profiles in Popular Music

“Aretha’s father, Clarence LaVaughn Franklin, was the most famous Black preacher of his day, and by far the most profound influence on the course of her life.”
― David Remnick, Holding the Note: Profiles in Popular Music

“drove off. King and Goffin went home to Jersey. That night, after tucking their kids into bed, they sat down and wrote the music and the lyrics. By the next morning, they had a hit.”
― David Remnick, Holding the Note: Profiles in Popular Music