B. B. King

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

You only live but once, and when your died your done, so let the good times roll.

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.

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.

I was a singing disc jockey who heard every type of music there was – and loved it all.

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.

You hear about the Duke Ellingtons, the Jimmie Luncefords, and the Fletcher Hendersons, but people sometimes forget that jazz was not only built in the minds of the great ones, but on the backs of the ordinary ones.

Jazz isn’t a what, it’s a how.

I use the audience as my color palette, my instrument.

What I can say is that for may years jazz musicians had to go to Europe, for instance, to be respected and to be sort of treated not in a discriminatory way. I don’t think there is anything controversial about me saying that. This is just a fact. …. Europeans really provided many venues over there and hailed the jazz artists, and a lot of musicians went over there and stayed over there for a long time. A lot of them moved over there, lived over there, and died over there.

And if I had a preference, it would be to be able to not be in the studio until 4 in the morning.

Man, you tell a story.

Sounds of daily life are musical. I try to absorb the intricacies of sounds as if I were listening to music.

[On the word Jazz] There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s only a word. What’s in a name? Nothing! Cats say, Call me Muhammed so-and-so. But what’s the difference? A name doesn’t make the music. It’s just called that to differentiate it from other types of music. Jazz is known all over the world as an American musical art form and that’s it. No America, no jazz. I’ve seen people try to connect it to other countries, for instance to Africa, but it doesn’t have a damn thing to do with Africa.

What a fool I am to think my breaking heart could kid the moon.

You have to sound sad first, then maybe later you can sound good.

I think we musicians are emissaries. Every time we go before the public, we’re there to make converts.

I let my body play what’s in my heart. I play life instead of notes. I play what I lived.

Sometimes I wish I could walk up to my music for the first time, as if I had never heard it before.

A young tenor player was complaining to me that Coleman Hawkins made him nervous. Man, I told him Hawkins was supposed to make him nervous! Hawkins has been making other sax players nervous for forty years!

People complain about the music industry, but this is a great time to be a musician.