B. B. King

What don’t I want to learn? I have how-to books, history, nature. Ain’t nobody here saying, ‘You’d better learn this.’ But I still think I’ve got a head on my shoulders, and it pleases me.

Playing the guitar is like telling the truth – you never have to worry about repeating the same [lie] if you told the truth. You don’t have to pretend, or cover up. If someone asks you again, you don’t have to think about it or worry about it because there it is. It’s you.

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.

Growing up, I was taught that a man has to defend his family. When the wolf is trying to get in, you gotta stand in the doorway.

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.

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.

I want the music to connect to people; reach people every time I perform.

Music doesn’t have to hop to be hip, as long as it swings it sings.

In Kansas City joints ran 9pm-5am. Pay was a $1.25 a night but somebody special like Count Basie could command $1.50.

Regardless of what you play, the biggest thing is keeping the feel going.

For me, I started on a Les Paul and went through years of playing other guitars and just came back full circle to what was more natural to me.

Learning to read music in Braille and play by ear helped me develop a damn good memory.

Play what you feel, feel what you play.

The beauty of Jazz is that it’s malleable. People address it to suit their own personalities.

My music had roots which I’d dug up from my own childhood, musical roots buried in the darkest soil.

Jazz is America’s classical music.

Musicians have the intimacy of bringing two people together and the aesthetic, romantic transference.

Jazz music today is from the head and not the heart.

I’m gonna live till I die.

If I were to call it black music, that would be untrue. I don’t know what that is, unless it would be some African drums or something.

I’m not playing for other musicians. We’re trying to reach the guy who works all day and wants to spend a buck at night. We’ll keep him happy.