B. B. King

When you don’t have much money, you worry that they’ll just put you in the ground someplace and your loved ones won’t know where you are.

When we went into World War II, I was a tractor driver then. I drove tractors on the plantation. So when they start calling people my age, 18, up, I was one they called.

Everybody wants to go to Heaven, but no one wants to die to get there!

I’m still searching even today for a sound, like the guy that’s searching for a home. I haven’t been able to find that completely. I’m satisfied at times with the sound of my guitar… but it is a little sound that I hear but I can’t tell anybody about it. I don’t know how. But if I ever get it, I’ll know.

Whenever I’m in Kansas City, I think back to all the jazz-blues greats who played the blues here – like Count Basie, Charlie Parker and Jay McShann. I watched those guys jam in different places and heard a lot of things – but I couldn’t do what they did. They were too good.

To me, singing is like talking. If it ain’t natural, it ain’t right.

It’s true I’ve always been attracted to the jazz band in an orchestral way, rather than a band way.

I feel that Jazz improvisation is the ultimate. You have to create on the spot, the essence of this music.

Man, as long as people want to hear Jazz, I’ll give it to them.

I’ll always write music. Whether I release a record, whether I let the public hear it or not, I’m always writing music.

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

I’m not going to change the way I look or the way I feel to conform to anything. I’ve always been a freak. So I’ve been a freak all my life and I have to live with that, you know. I’m one of those people.

If there is no dance, there is not music.

I can tell whether a person can play just by the way he stands.

If a player is pushing their ability, a certain amount of failure is inevitable. Maybe even desirable.

If you can’t play the blues, you might as well hang it up.

Let the music speak for itself.

The only thing better than singing is more singing.

Don’t play what’s there, play what’s not there.

I was first awakened to musical exploration by Dizzy and Bird.

Gratitude is when memory is stored in the heart and not in the mind.