B. B. King

The problem is that a lot of the blues stations are late on Saturday night, and like a lot of people, I ain’t no vampire!

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

Cotton was a force of nature. There’s a poetry to it, hoeing and growing cotton.

Blues is a tonic for whatever ails you. I could play the blues and then not be blue anymore.

I’ve seen myself on those lists of the 100 best guitarists, and if they think that I’m that good, thank them. Thank God for them. But I don’t think so.

For years the Trio did nothing but play for musicians and other hip people. We practically starved to death.

I wanted to put jazz on the record, all the loves of music that I had on the record, so I could show people I was ahead of my 19 years. It may have been over the heads of some people.

Music washes away the dust of every day life.

Just ’cause I’ve forgotten more than I can play, doesn’t mean it’s not Improv.

You explore beautiful songs and create your own interpretation of them.

Music making is the most joyful activity possible, the most perfect expression of any emotion.

Jazz isn’t a what, it’s a how.

I like the music. I love it and live it in fact, but for me the business part just plain stinks.

You’ve got to learn your instrument. Then, you practice, practice, practice. And then, when you finally get up there on the bandstand, forget all that and just wail.

I don’t care for the music when they’re talking bad about women because I think women are God’s greatest gift to the planet – I just like music.

I never practice my guitar. From time to time I just open the case and throw in a piece of raw meat.

[on Django Reinhardt] By far the most astonishing guitar player ever … Django was quite superhuman, there’s nothing normal about him as a person or a player

I feel I have only scratched the surface of what I know I am capable of doing.

Sometimes I wish I could walk up to my music for the first time, as if I had never heard it before.

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.