B. B. King

I’ve been married twice. Most women would rather not be married to a traveling blues singer.

We all have idols. Play like anyone you care about but try to be yourself while you’re doing so.

I was a regular hand when I was 7. I picked cotton. I drove tractors. Children grew up not thinking that this is what they must do. We thought this was the thing to do to help your family.

Jazz is the big brother of the blues. If a guy’s playing blues like we play, he’s in high school. When he starts playing jazz it’s like going on to college, to a school of higher learning.

Water from the white fountain didn’t taste any better than from the black fountain.

I’m a fan first. I believed Duke Ellington when he said there’s no bad music, just some of it is presented badly. As a kid, hanging around Church Street, the presentation of music was so powerful, I couldn’t help but jump for joy. I had discovered art, or truth, or whatever you want to call it; I had seen a light I’d follow forever.

There’s a way of playing safe and then there’s where you create something you haven’t created before.

Art [Blakey] would take young people with a potential and help them develop a voice as a player and as a writer.

I just wonder where I was when the talent was being given out, like George Benson, Kenny Burrell, Eric Clapton… oh, there’s many more! I wouldn’t want to be like them, you understand, but I’d like to be equal, if you will.

My first relationship to any kind of musical situation is as a listener.

May your heart always be joyful. May your song always be sung.

The reason I write music is that I feel it’s a vehicle or channel which leads to your true self, your essence.

With songwriting I spend a lot of time living life, accruing all these experiences, journaling, and then by the time I get to the studio I’m teeming with the drive to write.

Jazz is a beautiful woman whose older brother is a policeman.

If you hit a wrong note, then make it right by what you play afterward.

To play piano is a significant part of my life, my existence. It fulfills a very physical and spiritual need for me.

They’re not particular about whether you’re playing a flatted fifth or a ruptured 129th as long as they can dance to it.

Sometimes I think I was making music through the wrong end of a magnifying glass.

A band ought to have a sound all of its own. It ought to have a personality.

To the person who uses music as a medium for the expression of ideas, feelings, images, or what have you; anything which facilitates this expression is properly his instrument.

It’s like a whole orchestra, the piano for me.