B. B. King

There’s a sadness to all kinds of music if you want to hear it. There’s also happiness to it if you want to hear it. Blues was started by the slaves and I think everybody thinks that it all should be sad… even some of the slaves had fun with it.

I have a nice car, a Mercedes. And then I have an old El Camino truck that I’m crazy about. I like to get in that truck and go up in the hills near where I live, in Vegas, and take my camera. That, to me, is Heaven, being out in nature, taking pictures of the wildlife.

[moving to Las Vegas] It was sort of like a man getting married – you don’t have to go out looking for girls, you’ve got your girl with you. I could go to casinos any time I had money and wanted to, so I actually went less.

My wife Martha used to call me Ol’ Lemon Face because of my facial contortions when I play Lucille. I squeeze my eyes and open my mouth, raise my eyebrows, cock my head and God knows what else. I look like I’m in torture, when in truth, I’m in ecstasy. I don’t do it for show. Every fiber of my being is tingling.

And as long as people have problems, the blues can never die.

I would sit on the street corners in my hometown of Indianola, Mississippi, and I would play. And, generally, I would start playing gospel songs. People would come by on the street – you live in Time Square, you know how they do it – they would bunch up. And they would always compliment me on gospel tunes, but they would tip me when I played blues.

I want a kick to my band, but I don’t want the rhythm to hog the spotlight.

My role as a drummer is as a team player to enhance what is going on around me.

I decided that I would be one of the biggest new names; and I actually had some little fancy business cards printed up to announce it, ‘Count Basie. Beware, the Count is Here.

Master your instrument, master the music and then forget all that and just play.

Talent is cheap, and many talents treat themselves cheaply.

Jazz is not something that can be defined through blunt instruments. It is much more poetic than that.

Jazz without the Blues is like BBQ without the sauce.

What I came back to is that jazz is a music to be played and not to be intellectualized on.

Music washes away the dust of every day life.

I’ll play it first and tell you what it is later.

It seems like I always had to work harder than other people. Those nights when everybody else is asleep, and you sit in your room trying to play scales.

Improvising musicians are musical travelers, voyagers. There is a freedom to wander the musical landscape.

You can’t copy anybody and end up with anything. If you copy, you’re working without any real feeling.

Get out there and improvise and take chances and don’t be a perfectionist.

[On urging Nyro to tell Barbara Streisand that ‘Wedding Bell Blues’ had been personally written for her] It’s not a big lie.