B. B. King

I’ve known people that was a part of a family and always feel that the family liked everyone else but them. That hurts, and that’s as deep a hurt as you can possibly get. I’ve known people that would have problems with their love life. This is kind of how blues began – out of feeling misused, mistreated. Feeling like they had nobody to turn to. Blues don’t necessarily have to be sung by a person that came from Mississippi as I did, because there are people having problems all over the world.

I tell my children now that they are older, ‘If something happens to me… don’t make no big fuss over me. Don’t make no big expense on my funeral. Don’t put any pressure on the rest of the family. I’ve loved everybody, and I hope they loved me. But don’t create this big expense for the family.’

I don’t like anybody to be angry with me. I’d rather have friends.

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 started to like blues, I guess, when I was about 6 or 7 years old. There was something about it, because nobody else played that kind of music.

It seems like I always had to work harder than other people. Those nights when everybody else is asleep, and you sit in your room trying to play scales.

I started playing piano when I was 6. And I knew that wanted to be involved in that form of expression, whether it was through music, or acting, or dancing, or painting, or writing.

I never wanted to be like other blues singers. I might like hearing them play, but I’ve never wanted to be anyone other than myself. There are a few people that I’ve wished I could play like, but when I tried, it didn’t work.

Don’t threaten me with love, baby. Let’s just go walking in the rain.

Blues is a tonic for whatever ails you. I could play the blues and then not be blue anymore.

Ah music… a magic beyond all we do here!

I realized by using the high notes of the chords as a melodic line, and by the right harmonic progression, I could play what I heard inside me. That’s when I was born.

You gotta mean it and you gotta treat it gentle.

Check out the albums, … Check out the live performances. That’s the reality of it all. Music is such an energizing thing.

I met up with George Shearing about a year before my mother passed away. When I was 11 years old, Mama took me to the Edgewater Inn in Seattle and I was able to sit down and play piano for George and a lot of (the set list) was songs I had heard from the album, ‘Concerto For My Love.’ Then, after Mama died, my dad and I went to actually hear him perform at the Edgewater Inn when I was 12. Oh my gosh! It just really got me into playing piano.

To compose music, all you need to do is remember a tune that no one else has thought of.

Music does not come to you. You have to come to it and you’ll walk away with something you didn’t have before.

Instrumental music is increasingly marginalized.

It is this tendency to play with manic enthusiasm on every possible occasion that distinguishes the amateur Jazz musician from the professional.

I became a singer to sing my songs. They’re so hip who else is going to sing them?

Everything that happened to me as a child involved music. It was part of everyday life, as automatic as breathing.