B. B. King

Ignorance is bliss? That’s bull, far as I’m concerned. Because I was making a half a cent a side – one penny for a record. It’s like building buses, for example. If you built this bus for me and I didn’t know anything about it, you could charge me whatever I’d pay for it. Now, which one of us is crazy? Me. And that’s the way they did me on the records. But I don’t fault them for it, because if you don’t know, you don’t know. It took me to learn.

I wanted to connect my guitar to human emotions.

Once in a while, the thumb that fits over the neck of the guitar kinda bothers me a little bit, but not that much yet. I figure in time I won’t do much because of my age.

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.

When I heard T-Bone, I flat out lost my mind.

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.

The sound of the orchestra is one of the most magnificent musical sounds that has ever existed.

The essentials of Jazz are: melodic improvisation, melodic invention, swing and instrumental personality.

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

A good quartet is like a good conversation among friends interacting to each other’s ideas.

I would like to thank my father who discouraged me from playing the violin at an early age.

When I got started in New York, if you were different from Miles and Dizzy it was very difficult.

Men have died for this music. You can’t get more serious than that.

It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.

Improvisation is the ability to talk to oneself.

There’s always this sound out there that’s just a little beyond my reach and that just sort of keeps me going.

Music is the most interesting thing in the world.

Hell, nobody knows where jazz is going to go. There may be a kid right now in Chitlin Switch, Georgia, who is going to come along and upset everybody.

Inspiration may be a form of super-consciousness, or perhaps of subconsciousness—I wouldn’t know. But I am sure it is the antithesis of self-consciousness.

When you’re creating your own shit, even the sky ain’t the limit.

I am inclined to just write music and not worry about what people can or can’t do.