B. B. King

Do I love the road? Honestly? No – but it’s how I earn my living. I also don’t have the blues, like it’s some kind of fever. The blues is my job. It’s what I do.

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.

My mother was a very beautiful lady, I thought. She was very good to me. I guess – she died when I was nine and a half, but if she had lived, I probably wouldn’t be trying to play guitar. She wanted me to be known, but as something else. Not a guitar player.

The minute I stop singing orally, I start to sing by playing Lucille.

I just wonder where I was when the talent was being given out, like George Benson, Kenny Burrell, Eric Clapton… oh, there’s many more! I wouldn’t want to be like them, you understand, but I’d like to be equal, if you will.

Nobody loves me but my mother – And she could be jivin’, too.

I don’t really get nervous, I prepare. When the music messed up in the beginning, it tapped into my nerves and when you’re nervous and vulnerable, something special and something different can happen.

I don’t do something because I think it’ll sell 30 million albums. I couldn’t care less if it sells just one.

The reward for playing Jazz is playing Jazz.

It’s either hip or it ain’t.

If you have something in your life worth celebrating, you can put it in a blues song.

I worked until I could play and do changes at any tempo in any key and said ‘What else is there?’ Now I’m finding out.

By and large Jazz has always been like the kind of a man you wouldn’t want your daughter to associate with.

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

My music is the spiritual expression of what I am: my faith, my knowledge, my being.

The people who know nothing about music are the ones always talking about it.

The more you listen, the more your hear.

Jazz Improvisation means that practice is not as straightforward as it would be when you simply have a score to play.

I was a singing disc jockey who heard every type of music there was – and loved it all.

Some people try to get very philosophical and cerebral about what they’re trying to say with jazz. You don’t need any prologues, you just play. If you have something to say of any worth then people will listen to you.

What makes my approach special is that I do different things. I do jazz, blues, country music and so forth. I do them all, like a good utility man.