B. B. King

T-Bone was, to me, that sound of being in heaven.

And as long as people have problems, the blues can never die.

I look at an audience kind of like meeting my in-laws for the first time. You want to be yourself, but you still want to be somebody that they like. When I go onstage each night, I try my best to outguess my audience, and I like to feel in most cases like I’m a big guy with long rubber arms that I can reach around my audience and swing and sway with them – move them with me. And many nights, I can’t. Many nights I can. But you do like a good manager with a baseball team. You keep pulling pitchers, you keep trying.

If you can’t get your songs to people one way, you have to find another.

I have a nice car, a Mercedes. And then I have an old El Camino truck that I’m crazy about. I like to get in that truck and go up in the hills near where I live, in Vegas, and take my camera. That, to me, is Heaven, being out in nature, taking pictures of the wildlife.

I was born on a plantation, and things weren’t so good. We didn’t have any money. I never thought of the word ‘poor’ ’til I got to be a man, but when you live in a house that you can always peek out of and see what kind of day it is, you’re not doing so well. And your rest room is not inside the house.

Talent is only the starting point.

You can play a shoestring if you’re sincere.

Do not fear mistakes, there are none.

Working with Benny was important for me and for black musicians in general.

I’m always thinking about creating. My future starts when I wake up in the morning and see the light. Then I’m grateful.

However it goes, I’ll just keep playing. That’s where the basic satisfaction is at.

I’m glad I don’t have perfect pitch because it can drive you crazy.

I liked blues from the time my mother used to take me to church. I started to listen to gospel music, so I liked that. But I had an aunt at that time, my mother’s aunt who bought records by people like Lonnie Johnson, Robert Johnson, Blind Lemon Jefferson, and a few others.

In olden days a glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking, now heaven knows, anything goes.

I was never interested in singing in the church or school. I was more interested in becoming a musician.

I used to play a place in Twist, Arkansas… It used to get quite cold in Twist. And they used to take something that looked like a big garbage pail and set it in the middle of the floor, half-fill it with kerosene. They’d light that fuel and that’s what we’d use for heat… But this particular night, two guys started to fighting and one of them knocked the other one over onto this container. When they did it spilled on the floor. Now, it was already burning so when it spilled it looked like a river of fire. Everybody ran for the front door including yours truly. But when I got on the outside then I realized that I’d left the guitar inside. I went back for it. The building was a wooden building and it was burning so fast that when I got my guitar it started to collapse around me. So I almost lost my life trying to save the guitar. But the next morning we found that these two guys who were fighting were fighting about a lady. I never did meet the lady but I learned that her name was Lucille. So I named my guitar Lucille to remind me not to do a thing like that again.

It angers me how scholars associate the blues strictly with tragedy.

I have no elitist concepts about Jazz. I would not be the musician I am today without experiencing invaluable music styles that are at the roots of African American black life and culture.

Jazz is the continual pulsation of the now.

The value of music is to be able to play one note at the right time in the right way.