B. B. King

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 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.

I call myself a blues singer, but you ain’t never heard me call myself a blues guitar man.

A lot of people believe what other people say.

I’m still searching even today for a sound, like the guy that’s searching for a home. I haven’t been able to find that completely. I’m satisfied at times with the sound of my guitar… but it is a little sound that I hear but I can’t tell anybody about it. I don’t know how. But if I ever get it, I’ll know.

I could see that Bukka was born to be a bluesman, and I wondered if the same was true of me. I worried that I didn’t have his talent – or the talent of someone like Blind Lemon or T-Bone. I felt something beautiful inside Bukka’s soul. Even if I didn’t follow his style, I was moved by his sincerity. He loved telling stories, and used his blues to tell them. His blues was the book of his life. He sang about his rough times and fast time and loving times and angry times. He’d entertain at a party for two hundred people with the same enthusiasm as a party for twenty. Bukka gave it his all. His music had a consistency I admired. Like all the great bluesmen, he said, I am what I am. I wondered if I could be that steady and strong.

When I was in the country and I was trying to play, nobody seemed to pay too much attention to me. People used to say, ‘That’s just that ole blues singer.’

If you play a tune and a person don’t tap their feet, don’t play the tune.

The saxophone is an imperfect instrument, especially the tenor and soprano, as far as intonation goes. The challenge is to sing on an imperfect instrument that is outside of your body.

The louder they [the band] play the softer I sing.

They’re not particular whether you’re playing a flat 5th or a ruptured 129th as long as they can dance.

Miles’ sessions were not typical of anybody else’s sessions. They were totally unique.

Hell, nobody knows where jazz is going to go. There may be a kid right now in Chitlin Switch, Georgia, who is going to come along and upset everybody.

This guitar is such a pal. It’s a psychiatrist. It’s a doggone bartender. It’s a housewife. This guy is everything. Whenever I find that I’ve got a problem, I’ll go pick my guitar up and play. It’s the greatest pal in the whole world.

Mozart tapped the source from which all music flows, expressing himself with a spontaneity and refinement and breathtaking rightness.

I think the idea of a love song has changed. Most of the love songs we all loved as kids would be classified as funeral dirges now, you know, really super slow. I think nowadays the ballad has changed. It can have some up-tempo, some drums, some other things. ‘Forever’ would still be considered a ballad, I guess, but the tempo is probably more of a mid-tempo. The content is love song. I don’t know how to write anything else.

I have music inside me and I’m very lucky to be able to play music and that’s the way that I try to do it.

Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans.

In order to be honest with myself, I have to reveal more of who I am. This is a part of the improv process.

Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.

The Blues contain so much joy and sadness at the same time.