B. B. King

I don’t feel that no big stone should be put over my head, saying he did this, he did that. Unless there’s something that I really did do. I believe I’m just ordinary. And I’d like for people to think of me that way, as just a guy that tried. Wanted to be loved by other people because he loved people.

Growing up on the plantation there in Mississippi, I would work Monday through Saturday noon. I’d go to town on Saturday afternoons, sit on the street corner, and I’d sing and play.

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.

I think I’ve done the best I could have done. But I keep wanting to play better, go further. There are so many sounds I still want to make, so many things I haven’t yet done. When I was younger I thought maybe I’d reached that peak. But I’m 86 now, and if I make it through to next month, I’ll be 87. And now I know it can never be perfect, it can never be exactly what it should be, so you got to keep going further, getting better.

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

I’ve known people that was a part of a family and always feel that the family liked everyone else but them. That hurts, and that’s as deep a hurt as you can possibly get. I’ve known people that would have problems with their love life. This is kind of how blues began – out of feeling misused, mistreated. Feeling like they had nobody to turn to. Blues don’t necessarily have to be sung by a person that came from Mississippi as I did, because there are people having problems all over the world.

I never wanted to be like other blues singers. I might like hearing them play, but I’ve never wanted to be anyone other than myself. There are a few people that I’ve wished I could play like, but when I tried, it didn’t work.

I hate straight singing. I have to change a tune to my own way of doing it. That’s all I know.

Listening is more important than anything because that’s what music is. Somebody is playing something and you’re receiving it.

What we do as artists is a combination of experience and imagination. How that creeps into your work is not so linear.

The way I look at it, they’re all part of my musical diary, and I can listen to any one of them and it will bring up memories of what was going on at that time.

Jazz music is an aural souvenir of mankind’s attempt to express the intangible, the heart, the soul, through art.

Music’s a good thing, it calm the beast in the man.

I have a lot of albums yet to do.

I think that what is important is that the music be honest and direct and that it is relevant to today.

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 am not interested in compromising my music to make it palatable to an assumed sub-standard mass.

Music that is born complex is not inherently better or worse than music that is born simple.

I’m on some singer’s record date for a demo and I get a note to call Miles Davis. Of course, I didn’t believe it, but I wasn’t going to take a chance by not calling, and it was Miles. He said, ‘I’ve got a session in an hour over at Columbia, can you make it’

Don’t threaten me with love, baby. Let’s just go walking in the rain.

I work very hard at being the best musician I can be because I love it.