B. B. King

I never use that word, retire.

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 believe all people are good. Some just do bad things. I had a teacher – God bless him, he died a few years ago -Luther H. Henson. I was a student of his at the time I lost my mother. He was my one person that seemed like anything I wanted to know, I could ask him and he’d give me an answer that was right. He told me, ‘There’ll come a time when people won’t judge you by your color; they’ll judge you by your deeds; how you act and how you treat people.’ Hearing professor Henson say that made me think, and I guess sort of toe the line a little bit more. And later on I heard Dr. King say, ‘I have a dream, where you’ll be judged not by the colour of the skin…’ Of course, I’d been a man for years when Dr. King came along, but it hit me hard because it strengthened for me what prof Henson had already said when I was a boy.

Albert King wasn’t my brother in blood, but he sure was my brother in Blues!

You never miss what you’ve never had. I never had any other life. I didn’t know any other life.

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.

Miles Davis was a part of my life from 1947 on. I was born in 1941 and I first heard him in 1947 on a 78 rpm. And then I followed his career, starting with his first solo album in 1951. He was an icon and inspiration and a mentor to me.

I loved Billie Holiday more than any other person other than myself on the stage.

If you don’t make mistakes, you aren’t really trying.

Words are the children of reason and therefore can’t translate the feeling of Jazz because they’re not part of it.

I was probably six years old when I first sang before an audience.

They always want to sell me as a hard bopper.

Players are coming from other backgrounds: rock, folk, ethnic music. It’s changing Jazz for the better.

I think the most important thing about playing is to walk out with confidence, look the people right in the eye and say ‘Here I am,’ and go and do your thing. As soon as they know you’re confident, they’re confident. As long as you adjust to them you’re not in trouble. You should eyeball them, find out what they want, and give it to them. They didn’t pay to come out and look at the tapestries.

I don’t know where Jazz is going. Maybe it’s going to hell. You can’t make anything go anywhere. It just happens.

Don’t give up trying to do what you really want. Where there is love and inspiration, I don’t think you can go wrong.

Without jazz, life would be a mistake.

I don’t believe music can be free unless it has something to be free from.

We’re not like pop musicians who have to perform the same top ten tunes every night of a tour.

Playing ‘bop’ is like playing Scrabble with all the vowels missing.

If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn.