B. B. King

I tell my children now that they are older, ‘If something happens to me… don’t make no big fuss over me. Don’t make no big expense on my funeral. Don’t put any pressure on the rest of the family. I’ve loved everybody, and I hope they loved me. But don’t create this big expense for the family.’

I wanted to sustain a note like a singer. I wanted to phrase a note like a saxist. By bending the strings, by trilling my hand – and I have big fat hands – I could achieve something that approximated a vocal vibrato. I could sustain a note. I wanted to connect my guitar to human emotions. By fooling with the feedback between my amplifier and instrument, I started experimenting with sounds that expressed my feelings, whether happy or sad, bouncy or bluesy. I was looking for ways to let my guitar sing.

As a little kid, blues meant hope, excitement, pure emotion. Blues were about feelings. They seem to bring out the feelings of the artist and they brought out my feelings as a kid. They made me wanna move, or sing, or pick up Reverend’s guitar and figure out how to make those wonderful sounds.

I’m a fan first. I believed Duke Ellington when he said there’s no bad music, just some of it is presented badly. As a kid, hanging around Church Street, the presentation of music was so powerful, I couldn’t help but jump for joy. I had discovered art, or truth, or whatever you want to call it; I had seen a light I’d follow forever.

I’ve put up with more humiliation than I care to remember.

I believe all people are good. Some just do bad things. I had a teacher – God bless him, he died a few years ago -Luther H. Henson. I was a student of his at the time I lost my mother. He was my one person that seemed like anything I wanted to know, I could ask him and he’d give me an answer that was right. He told me, ‘There’ll come a time when people won’t judge you by your color; they’ll judge you by your deeds; how you act and how you treat people.’ Hearing professor Henson say that made me think, and I guess sort of toe the line a little bit more. And later on I heard Dr. King say, ‘I have a dream, where you’ll be judged not by the colour of the skin…’ Of course, I’d been a man for years when Dr. King came along, but it hit me hard because it strengthened for me what prof Henson had already said when I was a boy.

If you’ve only got one horn playing, I still want the sense of ensemble.

I don’t consider myself a musician who has achieved perfection and can’t develop any further.

This be an empty world without the blues.

Jazz is a music to be played and not to be intellectualized on.

For me, the Les Paul is the greatest rock ‘n’ roll guitar of all time. If you’re not playing a Gibson guitar and you’re playing this kind of music, whether it’s punk, metal or anything grounded in rock ‘n’ roll, you’re not really doing it right. I don’t think professionally I’d every play anything else. Gibson, thank you for making greatest guitars ever.

In fifteen seconds the difference between composition and improvisation is that in composition you have all the time you want to decide what to say in fifteen seconds, while in improvisation you have fifteen seconds.

The word “jazz” means to me no category, but when you get stuck into wanting to do something the way it was with the “jazz emblem” or logo chained around your neck, you play in a frozen moment in time and you keep fermenting the ‘fifties saying jazz should be this way or that. Well, if jazz to me means no category, then I’ve got the green light And if it sounds like.. sounds like.. sounds like, and keeps crossing over, it’s what I wanted to do in the first place. I like the way Stravinsky and those guys did things. They expressed something, if not themselves. In fact, some people talk about expression, but expression really doesn’t mean anything to me because there’s a lot of work which goes into building a drama and then it’s up to other people to offer “expression.” Expression is such a nebulous thing.

I like jazz, rock n’ roll, some hip hop – I can’t think of any music I don’t like.

We’re here to have a ball.

I can count on one hand the number of instrumental hits there have been over the last 10 years.

Music is the most interesting thing in the world.

In fact, I heard Bird first, and had got well into listening to him. You know, it’s the kind of accidental thing that awareness of a player is: what’s available, what somebody happens to play for you.

It’s spontaneity that has always characterized Jazz music’s finest improvisers.

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.

Critics don’t buy records. They get ’em free.