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“Mugge always brings the best out of his interview subjects. They always feel so comfortable talking to him and it actually feels like these artists are talking directly to you. I have to admit that I read this book in only a few sittings. It was that interesting and compelling. If you are a fan of these styles of music, then you will probably find yourself enthralled with its contents as well.”
—Graham Clarke’s blog, Friday Blues Fix
“Mugge presents a glorious oral history of American music and musicians. In the tradition of the late, great Studs Terkel, this collection rests on a simple axiom: Let the people speak. The results are a cross-sectional smorgasbord of reflections, interviews, meditations, exclamations, and heartfelt stories of musical artists hailing from the Deep South, Appalachia, and the Midwest, among other locales. The quote-based format opens up a feeling of dialogue between speakers and readers, who will easily make associations between different entries. The book is a pleasure to read straight through, but it may also be a valuable reference for music students. A comprehensive cultural appreciation for music lovers.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“An eminent anthropologist of American culture—and, above all, of American music—Mugge is the man to whom we owe memorable documentaries. Quotes from the Road: The Wit and Wisdom of American Musicians arrives three years after Notes from the Road (a memoir) replacing the author’s own reflections with the ‘quotes’ he gathered while interviewing 150 different artists. The result is a Baedecker of thoughts and observations, designed to be consulted like a catalog. While there was a risk of producing a somewhat stale collection of aphorisms…the editor successfully avoids this pitfall; by carefully curating the internal sequencing of these statements, he establishes a rhythm that—time and again—sparks emotion and curiosity, interest and engagement. The result is a vast fresco in the form of a long—a very, very long and deeply satisfying—multi-generational interview: a small yet grand epic on the potential of language and argumentation in an era when both have regressed to the few, often muddled characters of a social media post. Highly recommended.”
—Gianfranco Callieri, Buscadero (the Italian music magazine), July 2026
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Quotes from the Road:
The Wit and Wisdom of American Musicians
by Robert Mugge
2026 The Sager Group LLC 350 pages
Available to order wherever books are sold.
After 50 years of making highly regarded music documentaries and releasing a well-received 2023 memoir titled Notes from the Road: A Filmmaker’s Journey through American Music, filmmaker Robert Mugge is once again permitting 150 of his musician subjects (as well as others who support them) to speak for themselves, and this time at far greater length. With his new collection of thematically organized excerpts from favorite interviews, Mugge has created a companion piece for his previous music book, this one titled Quotes from the Road: The Wit and Wisdom of American Musicians. Among those discussing highlights of their lives and careers are singers and musicians depicted on the front cover: Sun Ra, Al Green, Sonny Rollins, Irma Thomas with Morgan Freeman, Dr. John, Gil Scott-Heron, Cyril Neville, Linda Ronstadt with Rubén Blades, Marcia Ball, Elvin Bishop, Bobby Rush with Lil’ Ed Williams, and Otis Clay. Also featured are scores of additional masters of blues, jazz, soul, gospel, folk, bluegrass, rhythm and blues, classical, Cajun, Creole, zydeco, swamp pop, roots rock, and Hawaiian music and dance, all sharing their insights, humor, and experience.
In his foreword to Quotes from the Road, acclaimed biographer Aidan Levy declares: “What you have in your hands—or on your screen—is not just a book. It’s a time machine, an archive, a historical record, a musical record, a travelogue, a thousand stories all part of our one cosmic human story—maybe, most significantly, a road map to the heart and soul of American music. Over a five-decade career in what he terms ‘music filmmaking,’ Robert Mugge has chronicled the origins, highways, and byways of American music through the lens of many of its key progenitors: he’s traveled the spaceways with Sun Ra; witnessed the untelevised revolution with self-proclaimed ‘bluesologist’ Gil Scott-Heron; reckoned with the devastation of Hurricane Katrina with Irma Thomas and documented the resilience of New Orleans; taken us there, to Clarksdale, with Mavis Staples, Odetta, and Morgan Freeman; and tapped the roots of the blues with Junior Kimbrough in a juke joint that was, under the radar, one of the most important places in America. Many of the greatest stories he’s heard across this 50-year odyssey are recorded in these pages… The book presents a vision of American pluralism and the role of place in shaping the regional character of the various art forms that sprang from the alluvial American soil and its tributaries.”
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