B. B. King

Blues purists never cared for me. I don’t worry about it. I think if it this way: When I made ‘Three O’ Clock Blues’, they were not there. The people out there made the tune. And blues purists just wrote about it. The people is who I’m trying to satisfy.

I like jazz, rock n’ roll, some hip hop – I can’t think of any music I don’t like.

The great jazz instrumentalists taught me how to sing and interpret a song. they showed me how a horn can have as much personality as an actor.

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.

Do I love the road? Honestly? No – but it’s how I earn my living. I also don’t have the blues, like it’s some kind of fever. The blues is my job. It’s what I do.

The beautiful thing about learning is nobody can take it away from you.

Anything I do has to be directly related to my music. If it isn’t, I don’t really see a point to it.

You don’t know what love is, until you’ve learned the meaning of the blues, until you’ve loved a love you’ve had to lose.

Music’s been around a long time, and there’s going to be music long after Ray Charles is dead. I just want to make my mark, leave something musically good behind. If it’s a big record, that’s the frosting on the cake, but music’s the main meal.

Oh, my darling, it’s incredible, that someone so unforgettable should think I am unforgettable, too.

You will never know what the meaning of Jazz is if ask what it means.

[on Ornette Coleman] Man, that cat is nuts!

My neighbors always listen to very hip Jazz… whether they like it or not.

If everyone liked what I did, I probably wouldn’t be playing anything of depth.

I just remember always trying to emulate Dinah Washington, hanging out in my bedroom closet.

Do it again on the next verse and people think you meant it.

I hope my recordings of my own works won’t inhibit other people’s performances. The brutal fact is that one doesn’t always get the exact tempo one wants, although one improves with experience.

No, working is what will keep you alive.

My singing evolved with a feeling of intense relaxation, always using my diaphram and breathing specifically through my nose.

[on Django Reinhardt] This was a man who changed my musical life by giving me a whole new perspective on the guitar and, on an even more profound level, on my relationship with sound…During my formative years, as I listened to Django’s records, especially songs like ‘Nuages’ that I would play for the rest of my life, I studied his technique. Even more, I studied his gentleness. I love the human sound he gave his acoustic guitar.

The challenge to the improvisor is to get permanence into his spontaneity. The challenge to the composer is to get spontaneity into his permanence.