B. B. King

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

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.

When we went into World War II, I was a tractor driver then. I drove tractors on the plantation. So when they start calling people my age, 18, up, I was one they called.

Touring a segregated America – forever being stopped and harassed by white cops hurt you most ‘cos you don’t realise the damage. You hold it in. You feel empty, like someone reached in and pulled out your guts. You feel hurt and dirty, less than a person.

I’d solo on my guitar; then sing; then solo; then sing some more. one stopped when the other started. That way I felt a continuity, not a conflict, like a wheel that keeps turning. Both sounds – guitar and voice – were coming out of me, but they issued from different parts of my soul.

The beautiful thing about learning is nobody can take it away from you.

I say this because it’s a good message to give to young talents who feel as I used to. You hear musicians playing with great fluidity and complete conception early on, and you don’t have that ability. I didn’t. I had to know what I was doing. And ultimately it turned out that these people weren’t able to carry their thing very far. I found myself being more attracted to artists who have developed through the years and become better and deeper musicians.I believe in things that are developed through hard work.

I play as I feel.

Jazz is a sideways glance at music. It’s like being an architect, knowing the basis of design but understanding that the façade can be whatever you dream. I’m a free person. I don’t want to be tied down.

An artist should write for himself and not for an audience. If the audience likes it, great. If not, they can keep away.

I like an element of chaos in music. That feeling is the best thing ever.

If you got up on the bandstand at Minton’s and couldn’t play, you might get your ass kicked.

Just allow your feelings to go with the music and you’ll find yourself carried along by it fairly quickly.

I grew up with the piano. I learned its language as I learned to speak.

Jazz is not to be sliced into bites by mass marketing geniuses who assume we are mindless cattle.

Each time I have the opportunity to play, it’s another chance to tell the truth.

Records used to be documents, but now record companies want product.

Jimmy (Wakely) told me, ‘I don’t want you to sound so much like Dinah Washington.’ So, I thought, ‘How can I get around this?’ And one of the people I really dug was Patti Page. So I thought, ‘Oh, I’m going to sound like her.’ I actually did with a couple curly-cues thrown in for effect, but, that’s how I started getting away from the predominant Dinah influence, and getting my own style together.

In the world of Art there are no wrong choices.

I played in rhumba bands, mickey mouse bands; all kinds of bands.

When the music changes, so does the dance.