21 Quotes by Johnny Gimble

When I'd hear something that sounded like I could follow it - most of those big band jazz tunes are blues anyway - I would hum it and play with the fiddle while I was humming.

When I was 15, I was working for a radio band in Shreveport. Cliff Bruner, the hottest Texas fiddler of them all, was on the same package shows, playing for Jimmie Davis.

My dad was a telegraph operator for the Cotton Belt Railroad. He worked seven nights a week from 4 until midnight, no vacation.

I grew up listening to the Light Crust Doughboys on WBAP.

I didn't really get crazy about Bob Wills until 1940.

I had a stroke in December of '99, and it affected my left side - my fingering side.

I go stay a week in these little towns that don't have an art outlet and... go to the schools and play some of the old Texas music, sort of 'go through the Texas country roots' is what they call it.

Texas was home. We went to Anchorage to get rich in 1959. Someone told us, 'If you drive a nail, you could make $100 a day in construction work.' We were hungry, and we stayed there for a year and a half. But I never did plan to stay there - the same with Nashville. I was gonna go up there and work, but Texas was home.

I still play the fiddle every day. I'm afraid if I don't, it won't know who I am.