B. B. King

If my fans want to do something for me when that time comes, I say, don’t waste your money on me. Help the homeless. Help the needy… people who don’t have no food… Instead of some big funeral, where they come from here and there and all over. Save it.

I could see the blues was about survival.

I wanted to connect my guitar to human emotions.

I knew that if I went to town on a Saturday, which I did, and there was two fountains, one said “Black” and one said “White.” I didn’t think other than that if you want to stay out of trouble, leave the white one alone. I also noticed that when I went to the restrooms there was one that said “White Men,” “White Ladies” and “Colored.” That’s all I knew. I grew up with it. It wasn’t like somebody just threw me down there and said, “You don’t bother that…” But I was taught that in my early life. My family would always say – because there was people being lynched around me. I haven’t seen people be lynched, but I’ve seen them after they was. And I was told by some of the elders that, you know, “Unless you do certain things this can happen to you or that can happen to you. You don’t bother the white ladies, you don’t do this, you don’t do that,” and I learned that at an early age and to me it was just part of my training. I think this is why black people never did resist for such a long, long time because if there’s any such thing as being brainwashed I was brainwashed, but it didn’t bother me.

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

She’s Dynamite’ was a 100 years ago, and I recorded that song because the company thought that it was a great song and it was hot. That was the beginning of rock n’ roll, and I guess they thought it would be a BB King version of rock n’ roll.

In composition you have all the time you want to decide what to say in 15 seconds, in improvisation you have 15 seconds.

I’d take my guitar and play on the streets. A gospel song would get me a pat on the head. But a blues would get me a dime. So you see why I stuck with the blues.

Jazz musicians are the only workers who will put in a full shift for pay and then go somewhere else and continue to work for free.

I’m using the insides of sounds to move around in a very subtle way which, I think, ends up being inevitable. I feel its the only solution to that particular problem that I presented myself.

You’re just a little too hip for the room. It’s not good to be too hip because two hips make an ass.

I never thought Jazz was meant to be a museum piece like other dead things once considered artistic.

If T-Bone Walker had been a woman, I would have asked him to marry me. I’d never heard anything like that before: single-string blues played on an electric guitar.

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

I didn’t know the right names for anything at first, but I knew what knocked me out. Changes… man I dug.

Music gives us a lot of things and it only wants one thing back… your attention.

The spirit of Jazz is the spirit of openness.

The people who really got me off were dealing with the musical potential of their instrument.

Judy Garland was the singer I most wanted to sound like then, not to copy, but to get some of her soul and purity. A wonderful young voice.

I don’t have a definition of Jazz. You’re just supposed to know it when you hear it.

It was in tune when I bought it.