B. B. King

My last divorce was in ’68. What made it come to a head was a promise. See, I had promised her that the next year I wouldn’t work as much. But then I got in trouble with the IRS, and I had to continue working just as much to pay the government. So she said I lied, which is something I never did.

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.

I always liked the steel guitar. I also love the guys that play the bottleneck. But I could never do it; I never made it do what I want. So every time I would pick up the guitar, I’d shake my hand and trill it a bit. For some strange reason my ears would say to me that sounds similar to what those guys were doing. I can’t pick up the guitar now without doing it. So that’s how I got into making my sound. It was nothing pretty. Just trying to please myself. I heard that sound.

Ignorance is bliss? That’s bull, far as I’m concerned. Because I was making a half a cent a side – one penny for a record. It’s like building buses, for example. If you built this bus for me and I didn’t know anything about it, you could charge me whatever I’d pay for it. Now, which one of us is crazy? Me. And that’s the way they did me on the records. But I don’t fault them for it, because if you don’t know, you don’t know. It took me to learn.

Jazz is the big brother of the blues. If a guy’s playing blues like we play, he’s in high school. When he starts playing jazz it’s like going on to college, to a school of higher learning.

As you get older, your fingers sometimes swell. But I’ve missed 18 days in 65 years. Sometimes guys will just take off; I’ve never done that. If I’m booked to play, I go and play.

I’m now a legend, whether I want to be or not.

One chord is fine. Two chords are pushing it. Three chords and you’re into jazz.

You can practice to learn technique, but I’m more interested in conceiving something in the moment.

The challenge to the improvisor is to get permanence into his spontaneity. The challenge to the composer is to get spontaneity into his permanence.

Jazz is so incestuous that it’s starting to kill itself.

In a way, I started out to be a baritone player.

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

Jazz music has always made powerful statements about freedom, creativity and personal identity.

When I cannot sing my heart, I can only speak my mind.

The jazziest American contribution to the vocabulary of English is Jazz itself.

Ideologies separate us. Art brings us together.

You can make a saxophone into an electric organ; you can do everything with it.

Knowledge speaks, wisdom listens.

Inspiration comes from tunes you play, other musicians and your own imagination.

I had a really good time in New Orleans, although I had some very tragic times in Baton Rouge. Some guys beat me up and threw my horn away. ‘Cause I had a beard, then, and long hair like the Beatles.