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Rolling Stones Quotes: Mick Jagger about discovering the blues

“I became interested in blues firstly when I found out that it as much as existed. It was never played on the radio and, if it was, it was only by accident. Things that were hits in America, but never over here. I subsequently became aware that Big Bill Broonzy was a blues singer and Muddy Waters was also a blues singer, and rock and blues singers were all really the same and it didn’t matter. There were no divisions and I’d realized that by the time I was 15. Blues had two things going, really: It had the emotional thing of bad times and broken hearts, which everyone could understand, and it had the upbeat thing of the dance…

…It was a moving dance music. And as far as white people were concerned, it was interesting to them, especially white sort of suburban kids, which is really what rock music appeals to, because it was underclass music. It was music from an underclass that they had no experience of, or, in fact, that didn’t even exist by the time that they got to it anyway – almost. It was disappearing. That culture was on the way out. It had a certain appeal that rap music would have to middle-class children.”

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Mick Jagger’s love affair with the blues started young—way before the Rolling Stones ever existed. As a kid growing up in post-war England, he got hooked on American blues records, thanks to imports from Chess and Vee-Jay Records. While most of his classmates were into skiffle or pop, Mick was absorbing the raw sounds of Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, and Jimmy Reed, and discovering them.

By the time he met Keith Richards on a train in 1961, he was already carrying blues LPs under his arm—Little Walter, Chuck Berry, the good stuff. That shared obsession led to jam sessions, which led to a band, which led to the Stones bringing the blues to the masses. Jagger didn’t just sing the blues; he studied it, lived it, and helped introduce it to an entire generation. Without those early discoveries, there might never have been a Rolling Stones as we know them.

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