B. B. King

I’ve been married twice. Most women would rather not be married to a traveling blues singer.

Blues purists never cared for me. I don’t worry about it. I think if it this way: When I made ‘Three O’ Clock Blues,’ they were not there. The people out there made the tune. And blues purists just wrote about it. The people is who I’m trying to satisfy.

You only live but once, and when your died your done, so let the good times roll.

Everything I record, I just try to sound like me and come up with songs that suit what I do and then just go for it. I never know what the public’s going to like, anyway.

In our local Baptist church, I sang in the choir and formed a gospel quartet. When our minister caught me messing with his guitar, he taught me three positions – one, four and five. After that, I taught myself to play.

I used to play – when I first started trying to be professional, I disk jockey from 1949 to 1955 in Memphis, Tennessee, and I was quite popular there as a disk jockey.

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

I don’t care if a dude is purple with green breath as long as he can swing.

We all do ‘do, re, mi’ but you got to find the other notes yourself.

Good Jazz is when the leader jumps on the piano, waves his arms and yells. Fine Jazz is when a tenorman lifts his foot in the air. Great Jazz is when he heaves a piercing note for 32 bars and collapses on his hands and knees. A pure genius of Jazz is manifested when he and the rest of the orchestra runaround the room while the rhythm section grimaces and dances around their instruments.

Jazz music is collective creativity.

It’s not uncomfortable for me to be a sideman, but I feel more comfortable as a bandleader.

Jazz is an art that makes a person completely naked.

Let my children have music.

I remember going to sleep many nights with a Gibson catalog, dreaming about getting a Les Paul. I finally did, with a loan from my Dad. It’s a really heavy instrument. But it plays like butter. I met Les backstage at a show once. Jeff Beck made me play ‘Flight of the Bumblebee’ for Les, which was a little embarrassing. He changed history, big-time.

If you hit a wrong note, then make it right by what you play afterward.

I’m going to make music out of whatever style it is, being true to the artform itself.

Do it again on the next verse and people think you meant it.

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?

Hipness is what it is. But sometimes hipness is what it ain’t.

A great teacher stimulates his student’s creativity enough so that they go out and find the answers themselves.