21 Quotes by Johnny Gimble

I tell my audiences today that I served 10 years in Nashville! That's a joke, of course; I was grateful for the work. Bob Ferguson, who produced Connie Smith, Porter Wagoner and Dolly Parton, started calling me in.

I was never very good at picking cotton, and then I only made fifty cents or $1 a day. People would work for $1 a day during the Depression. So we would get $2 for playing music and just having fun. I think that as a result of that it was not just the money, but we enjoyed doing it.

Mostly, whenever I'm booked to do instruction, I just play a little bit and get people to ask questions. We'll play some music for 'em, 'til somebody hollers out, 'Play 'Milk Cow Blues' or 'Play 'San Antonio Rose.' We play requests and demonstrate our music.

When I get asked for advice for a young person starting in the music business, I tell them, 'Play every chance you get, and be real lucky.'

When the doctors showed me an X-ray of my brain, they pointed to a black hole on the upper left side and told me that all memory from that spot was dead. I thought to myself that I hoped that's where I kept 'The Orange Blossom Special.'

To join Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys was like throwing a baseball around in your front yard and somebody coming over and signing you to play for the New York Yankees.

It's just a real thrill when you're showing somebody a chord progression or something, and you see that light come on, you know. You see 'em 'get it.'

I keep a fiddle hooked up in the music - we've got a music room - and try to pick it up.

I asked the man on the phone from the National Endowment for the Arts what this fellowship entailed, and he said, 'Well, first there's $10,000.' I asked him, 'Can I pay it in installments?'