B. B. King

Blues purists never cared for me. I don’t worry about it. I think if it this way: When I made ‘Three O’ Clock Blues’, they were not there. The people out there made the tune. And blues purists just wrote about it. The people is who I’m trying to satisfy.

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

Any time that people think enough of you to put up something that’s everlasting is only going to make you feel good.

I look at an audience kind of like meeting my in-laws for the first time. You want to be yourself, but you still want to be somebody that they like. When I go onstage each night, I try my best to outguess my audience, and I like to feel in most cases like I’m a big guy with long rubber arms that I can reach around my audience and swing and sway with them – move them with me. And many nights, I can’t. Many nights I can. But you do like a good manager with a baseball team. You keep pulling pitchers, you keep trying.

My dad died, I think, at 87. So I’ll be lucky if I make 87. But in a lot of cases, the younger people live longer than their parents. And they know more. My dad used to tell me he ate the hog from his rooter to his tooter. So do I when I’m not trying to lose weight.

You’ve heard me call myself a bluesman and a blues singer. I call myself a blues singer, but you ain’t never heard me call myself a blues guitar man. Well, that’s because there’s been so many can do it better’n I can, play the blues better’n me. I think a lot of them have told me things, taught me things.

To stop the flow of music would be like the stopping of time itself, incredible and inconceivable.

I’ve always felt rock and roll was very, very wholesome music.

The joy of music should never be interrupted by a commercial.

It doesn’t have to be happy music to be inspiring.

It’s taken me all my life to learn what not to play.

Music is the only language in which you cannot say anything sarcastic.

Jazz is the sound of surprise.

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

One way or the other, if you want to find reasons why you shouldn’t keep on, you’ll find ’em. The obstacles are all there; there are a million of ’em.

If I don’t practice for a day, I know it… for two days, the critics know it… three days, the public knows it.

The expression of freedom that is Jazz improvisation mirrors the ethos of the best parts of society.

Jazz translates the moment into a sense of inspiration for not only the musicians but for the listeners.

Being a singer is a natural gift. It means I’m using to the highest degree possible the gift that God gave me to use. I’m happy with that.

[on Django Reinhardt] This was a man who changed my musical life by giving me a whole new perspective on the guitar and, on an even more profound level, on my relationship with sound…During my formative years, as I listened to Django’s records, especially songs like ‘Nuages’ that I would play for the rest of my life, I studied his technique. Even more, I studied his gentleness. I love the human sound he gave his acoustic guitar.

It’s not what they think, it’s about what’s best for the music.