A biography for Daryl Hallhasn’t been written yet.
“When you're playing in front of people, everything is external. It's all going from you out to an audience. When you're in a studio, it's very internalised, it's going from the air through you into this meticulously crafted, layered piece of work.”
“Like all soul singers, I grew up singing in church but sometimes I would leave early and sit in the car listening to gospel band, The Blind Boys of Alabama. Hearing their lead singer Clarence made me connect the idea of church and show business and see how I could make a career singing music that stirred the soul.”
“In the early '70s, I started to feel like Philadelphia soul was the black-sheep brother of rock and roll. I decided to try to get away from it.”
“I'm just about the best singer I know, and it's time for everybody to say that. I have total facility with my voice. And for some weird reason, critics don't talk about it.”
“If you can sing, you never lose your voice. If you don't know how to sing, your voice goes away because you sing from your throat.”
“I specialize in early homes, and what I care about the most is renovating a home and taking it back to its original construction idea.”
“To write a good song, an artist has to drawn from reality. There has to be some spark from realism that communicates a real feeling to someone else. You have to be real. Or you have to be a really good storyteller.”
“I'm used to the egos in the 1960s, '70s and '80s where people just expected massive success and thought it was their birth right to be successful.”
“I think an artist's true worth comes through an inter-generational thing - when you go beyond your own time, and start influencing people in a greater way than just what surrounds you.”
“The Internet allows me to be more free.”
“The 'Daryl's House' thing has made me into a live musician even more than I ever was, and even in the way I record.”
“This illness made it impossible for me to give my best effort to our audience, but now that it's been identified, I'm looking forward to a complete, quick recovery and to get back out there with John as soon as possible.”
“If you're African American, you are forced into making different choices, in a lot of cases, than you are as a white person.”
“I definitely dislike pomposity and artifice. I hope that I'm not that. Once I write a song, it belongs to the world, and the way people perceive it, it's cool.”
“Nobody really cares about what other people think anymore; they're all about themselves.”
“If Paul McCartney tells me that so-and-so song is his favorite song, what do I care? What do I care what anybody else says?”
“I've always been a guy who likes to stretch my limits - to find out if I have any, really.”
“I had the idea of 'Live From Daryl's House' way before I contracted Lyme disease.”
“As a singer, I float around. I'm kind of scatty, bouncing around a lot. I try to adapt to what's going on around me in the song and the arrangement.”
“When I was a kid, I always looked up to people like B.B. King and Ray Charles.”