W. C. Handy

"I think America concedes that (true American music) has sprung from the negro. When we take these things that come from the art of the Negro and from the heart of the man farthest down."

"Life is like a trumpet. If you don't put anything into it, you don't get anything out."

"If my serenade of song and story should serve as a pillow for some composer's head, as yet perhaps unborn, to dream and build on our fond melodies in his tomorrow, I have not labored in vain."

"It's a street in Memphis that W.C. Handy wrote about in his "Beale Street Blues." You know, If Beale Street could talk,/If Beale Street could talk,/Married men would have to take their beds and walk."

"The blues is a method. It represents a treatment of songs, first by W. C. Handy, and then by a great line of singers and musicians."