B. B. King

We all have idols. Play like anyone you care about but try to be yourself while you’re doing so.

I have not been a good father, but no father has loved his children more. Like my father, I decided the best thing I could do for my kids was work and provide. Fortunately, I’ve been able to do that. Unfortunately, my work was on the road, and that’s meant a life of one-nighters.

The blues was like that problem child that you may have had in the family. You was a little bit ashamed to let anybody see him, but you loved him. You just didn’t know how other people would take it.

I think Ive done the best I could have done. But I keep wanting to play better, go further. There are so many sounds I still want to make, so many things I havent yet done. When I was younger I thought maybe Id reached that peak. But Im 86 now, and if I make it through to next month, Ill be 87. And now I know it can never be perfect, it can never be exactly what it should be, so you got to keep going further, getting better.

I could see the blues was about survival.

I don’t try to just be a blues singer – I try to be an entertainer. That has kept me going.

I like the interplay in the music.

I heard someone say ‘What’s that kid doing here? Call your piano player and let’s get started.’

If your dreams don’t scare you they’re not big enough!

The deeper you get into the music allows the ability to appreciate art and all other forms of expression.

Apparently Jazz is now considered high art and the average person has trouble understanding it.

I gave it my absolute everything I had in that howl at the start of the song. And then B. B. King opened up his mouth and I felt like a girl. We had learned and absorbed, but the more we tried to be like B.B., the less convincing we were.

One thing I like about jazz is that it emphasized doing things differently from what other people were doing.

In our local Baptist church, I sang in the choir and formed a gospel quartet. When our minister caught me messing with his guitar, he taught me three positions – one, four and five. After that, I taught myself to play.

You never get it figured out. You just keep playing.

The first jazz I heard was Duke Ellington. I was learning to play classical music, but my teacher swapped out those lessons for jazz lessons because I had started adding grace notes to Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff.

I’m famous… ain’t that a bitch?

No one is original. Everyone is derivative.

It’s not what you do, but the way you’re doing it and in the end that’s all that we have.

They told me to play what I felt. Hey, I’m a Jazz musician, that’s what I do.

I have no one style.