B. B. King

You’ve heard me call myself a bluesman and a blues singer. I call myself a blues singer, but you ain’t never heard me call myself a blues guitar man. Well, that’s because there’s been so many can do it better’n I can, play the blues better’n me. I think a lot of them have told me things, taught me things.

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

Jazz is the big brother of the blues. If a guy’s playing blues like we play, he’s in high school. When he starts playing jazz it’s like going on to college, to a school of higher learning.

There are so many sounds I still want to make, so many things I haven’t yet done.

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

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.

Don’t bullshit, just play.

Jazz music is a language of the emotions.

Music should not have any mandates. Jazz is not supposed to be something that is required to sound like jazz.

Jazz is not a what, it is a how.

The time is now.

Music is the most fantastic drug there is!

What I learned the most from Prince was putting art first, being creatively ambitious, and putting creativity at the forefront of what I do.

Jazz is the continual pulsation of the now.

A musician’s responsibility is to get as much of his art across to the public as possible.

I believe in using the entire piano as a single instrument capable of expressing every possible musical idea.

A series of vibrations. What does it matter, the source of the catalyst?

I bought my first electric guitar when I moved to Memphis; a Gibson with a DeArmond pickup which I used with a small Gibson amplifier.

There are wonderful things in Jazz, the improvisation, the liveliness, the being at one with the audience.

Music is what feelings sound like.

The violin, the saxophone, the trumpet: Each makes a very different sound but the very same notes. That’s pretty heavy, you know ? Imagine how many different races make up the human race. I’m called colored, you’re called white, he’s called something else. We still got an asshole and a mouth. Pardon me.