B. B. King

I was shocked more than most white people to find we had a black President!

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

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

We all have idols. Play like anyone you care about, but try to be yourself while you’re doing so.

If T-Bone Walker had been a woman, I would have asked him to marry me. I’d never heard anything like that before: single-string blues played on an electric guitar.

I liked blues from the time my mother used to take me to church. I started to listen to gospel music, so I liked that. But I had an aunt at that time, my mother’s aunt who bought records by people like Lonnie Johnson, Robert Johnson, Blind Lemon Jefferson, and a few others.

I only knew classical music, which to me was the only true music. The only way I could survive at the bar was to mix the classical music with popular songs, and that meant I had to sing. What happened was that I discovered I had a voice plus the talent to mix classical music together with more popular songs, which at the time I detested.

If the bass plays the root, a pianist superimposes a Maj7 built on the 5th and the sax plays the 13th, will hot women notice?

The true beauty of music is that it connects people.

I think I love it more as I get older because I keep getting better on drums, vibes and piano.

Many people forget that Jazz, no matter what form it takes, must come from the heart as well as the mind.

Only the French, I guess, really use tenor and alto to any great extent in the orchestra.

There is no such thing as a wrong note.

The first time I ever had to go overseas for music was to play the Royal Festival Hall in London, singing in a tribute to Ella Fitzgerald, and that week was insane: Thursday I rehearse with the orchestra; Friday I sing two songs in front of 2,500 people, which I have never done before; and the next day I go to Abbey Road to record with Herbie Hancock; and then I am playing a pub in south London somewhere, and nobody cares because London have lost some sporting match; and then I go home and I’m standing in front of my washing machine, putting my unmentionables into the dryer, and in that instant, I just looked at myself and said ‘This life is going to be strange’.

The piano ain’t got no wrong notes.

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

I started out to become a jazz pianist; in the meantime I started singing and I sang the way I felt and that’s just the way it came out.

I’m now a legend, whether I want to be or not.

Music is my life, professionally, for nearly 60 years. To be recognized by the academy is still the highest honor.

Miles told me not to use vibrato because when you get old, you’re going to shake anyway.

The essentials of Jazz are: melodic improvisation, melodic invention, swing and instrumental personality.