B. B. King

I don’t have a favorite song that I’ve written. But I do have a favorite song: ‘Always on My Mind,’ the Willie Nelson version. If I could sing it like he do, I would sing it every night. I like the story it tells.

When you don’t have much money, you worry that they’ll just put you in the ground someplace and your loved ones won’t know where you are.

I knew that if I went to town on a Saturday, which I did, and there was two fountains, one said “Black” and one said “White.” I didn’t think other than that if you want to stay out of trouble, leave the white one alone. I also noticed that when I went to the restrooms there was one that said “White Men,” “White Ladies” and “Colored.” That’s all I knew. I grew up with it. It wasn’t like somebody just threw me down there and said, “You don’t bother that…” But I was taught that in my early life. My family would always say – because there was people being lynched around me. I haven’t seen people be lynched, but I’ve seen them after they was. And I was told by some of the elders that, you know, “Unless you do certain things this can happen to you or that can happen to you. You don’t bother the white ladies, you don’t do this, you don’t do that,” and I learned that at an early age and to me it was just part of my training. I think this is why black people never did resist for such a long, long time because if there’s any such thing as being brainwashed I was brainwashed, but it didn’t bother me.

The great jazz instrumentalists taught me how to sing and interpret a song. they showed me how a horn can have as much personality as an actor.

If you can’t get your songs to people one way, you have to find another.

The Blues? It’s the mother of American music. That’s what is is – the source.

When I heard T-Bone, I flat out lost my mind.

I’m not like a legend that – so I’m sort of in the middle in this sort of gray area where, you know, I’m creating music, and I’m not saying there isn’t an audience, because there is; because all of those people go out and spend $80 to $150 on a concert ticket.

Rather than say I play Jazz, I simply say I play music.

Ah music… a magic beyond all we do here!

Of the whole bunch of guys who play hollow body guitar, I think Herb Ellis has the most drive.

Jazz is not a what, it is a how.

Anybody can write music of a sort. But touching the public heart is quite another thing.

Music isn’t just learning notes and playing them. You learn notes to play the music of your soul.

How are you going to know what’s new to play if you haven’t listened to everything that’s old?

I realized by using the high notes of the chords as a melodic line, and by the right harmonic progression, I could play what I heard inside me. That’s when I was born.

Start well and end well. The middle will look after itself.

Your accompanist has a lot to do with how you sing, so experiment and choose your partner wisely.

Jazz is a work in progress. We’ll be defining traditions in Jazz for 200-300 years.

I thought I had swell ideas and wonderful musicians but no one else did.

If you take the time and your talent is real, it will last.