B. B. King

I’d take my guitar and play on the streets. A gospel song would get me a pat on the head. But a blues would get me a dime. So you see why I stuck with the blues.

Sometimes I just think that there are more things to be said to make the audience understand what I’m trying to do more. When I’m singing, I don’t want you to just hear the melody. I want you to relive the story, because most of the songs have pretty good storytelling.

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

I bought my first electric guitar when I moved to Memphis; a Gibson with a DeArmond pickup which I used with a small Gibson amplifier.

T-Bone was, to me, that sound of being in heaven.

I started to like blues, I guess, when I was about 6 or 7 years old. There was something about it, because nobody else played that kind of music.

Quiet is the absence of sound. Silence is the presence of silence.

Joe’s been my drummer for 14 years, and we’ve been buddies for six years.

You should never be comfortable, man. Being comfortable fouled up a lot of musicians.

I want to keep redefining my work and trying new things. I want my music to be able to fit into any category. I want it to float wherever my heart goes. My music is heart music; giving it any other description is dangerous.

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

Life is 10% what you make it and 90% how you take it.

At times as a performer they segregated us in some of theatres.

I don’t have a definition of Jazz. You’re just supposed to know it when you hear it.

Dizzy used to tell me I’m playing too hard. He’d say to not give everything. Miles told me that too.

I think the one thing that I’ve learned is that you cannot predict what’s going to happen. You can’t sit back and try to figure out what people want or leave it up to them to decide. When we all started in this business we would dictate to the audience what was great and they picked up on that based on the fact that we believed that it was great. But that’s all changed. What’s happened in the last ten years or so because is that the technology now means that everyone with a computer can make music and I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not.

I remember Glenn Miller coming to me once, before he had his own band, saying, How do you do it? How do you get started? It’s so difficult. I told him, I don’t know but whatever you do don’t stop. Just keep on going.

Anything I do has to be directly related to my music. If it isn’t, I don’t really see a point to it.

To be a true artist you have to play the way you feel not the way others think you should feel.

You may be sitting in a room reading this book. Imagine one note struck upon the piano. Immediately that one note is enough to change the atmosphere of the room – proving that the sound element in music is a powerful and mysterious agent, which it would be foolish to deride or belittle.

I’ve said that playing the blues is like having to be black twice. Stevie Ray Vaughan missed on both counts, but I never noticed.