B.B. King Quotes

#1. I don't like to feel that I owe anything. I like to feel that I pay my own way, no free lunch.

B.B. King

#2. Religion began as a natural explanation of the universe. The problem started when people refused to accept new evidence.

B.B. King

#3. Growing up, I was taught that a man has to defend his family. When the wolf is trying to get in, you gotta stand in the doorway.

B.B. King

#4. 'She's Dynamite' was a 100 years ago, and I recorded that song because the company thought that it was a great song and it was hot. That was the beginning of rock n' roll, and I guess they thought it would be a BB King version of rock n' roll.

B.B. King

#5. I guess you can look at me, and tell I'm the old man. My name is BB King.

B.B. King

#6. I don't do much recording anymore, but before I really stopped, I was glad to get five, five cent a record. That's why when I see people today and they complain about what they get, and I picked cotton for $2.50 a day.

B.B. King

#7. I don't try to just be a blues singer - I try to be an entertainer. That has kept me going.

B.B. King

#8. 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.

B.B. King

#9. Do I love the road? Honestly? No - but it's how I earn my living. I also don't have the blues, like it's some kind of fever. The blues is my job. It's what I do.

B.B. King

#10. My last divorce was in '68. What made it come to a head was a promise. See, I had promised her that the next year I wouldn't work as much. But then I got in trouble with the IRS, and I had to continue working just as much to pay the government. So she said I lied, which is something I never did.

B.B. King

#11. Playing the guitar is like telling the truth - you never have to worry about repeating the same [lie] if you told the truth. You don't have to pretend, or cover up. If someone asks you again, you don't have to think about it or worry about it because there it is. It's you.

B.B. King

#12. I can't think of anyone I've mistreated. I've always thought that I am my brother's keeper. And I believe there's a 'great spirit' that takes care of all of us.

B.B. King

#13. 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.

B.B. King

#14. If there was no ladies, I wouldn't wanna be on the planet. Ladies, friends, and music - without those three, I wouldn't wanna be here.

B.B. King

#15. Charlie Christian had no more impact on my playing than Django Reinhardt or Lonnie Johnson. I just wanted to play like him. I wanted to play like all of them. All of these people were important to me. I couldn't play like any of them, though ...

B.B. King

#16. I don't think it's meant for man to know everything at once.

B.B. King

#17. I have a nice car, a Mercedes. And then I have an old El Camino truck that I'm crazy about. I like to get in that truck and go up in the hills near where I live, in Vegas, and take my camera. That, to me, is Heaven, being out in nature, taking pictures of the wildlife.

B.B. King

#18. I never met a woman I didn't like. I love 'em all, in their different ways.

B.B. King

#19. Playing guitar is like telling the truth.

B.B. King

#20. I was a regular hand when I was 7. I picked cotton. I drove tractors. Children grew up not thinking that this is what they must do. We thought this was the thing to do to help your family.

B.B. King

#21. I'd rather be B.B. King. That's the way I started. Let the heavy metal guys play heavy metal, let the others play the other ... I try to do what I do better, not get away from it.

B.B. King

#22. Many people leave the country to see beautiful places. I just look out the window and see some of the most gorgeous scenery ever, right here in the USA.

B.B. King

#23. I wanted to connect my guitar to human emotions.

B.B. King

#24. Once in a while, the thumb that fits over the neck of the guitar kinda bothers me a little bit, but not that much yet. I figure in time I won't do much because of my age.

B.B. King

#25. Cotton was a force of nature. There's a poetry to it, hoeing and growing cotton.

B.B. King

#26. There was a lot of other young players around at that time when I was coming, but there was older people like Blind Lemon, which was one of my favorites. I don't know, just seemed like everybody I heard could play better than me.

B.B. King

#27. I tried to connect my singing voice to my guitar an' my guitar to my singing voice. Like the two was talking to one another.

B.B. King

#28. Albert King wasn't my brother in blood, but he sure was my brother in Blues

B.B. King

#29. Blues is a tonic for whatever ails you. I could play the blues and then not be blue anymore.

B.B. King

#30. 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.

B.B. King

#31. If my fans want to do something for me when that time comes, I say, don't waste your money on me. Help the homeless. Help the needy ... people who don't have no food ... Instead of some big funeral, where they come from here and there and all over. Save it.

B.B. King

#32. I just wonder where I was when the talent was being given out, like George Benson, Kenny Burrell, Eric Clapton ... oh, there's many more! I wouldn't want to be like them, you understand, but I'd like to be equal, if you will.

B.B. King

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

B.B. King

#34. God made Blues right after he made woman.

B.B. King

#35. I didn't want to disrespect my parents, so I never played blues around the house. But I knew then, same as I know today, that I wasn't doing anything wrong. I think that before they died, they both felt very proud of me.

B.B. King

#36. Sometimes the proprietors of the little juke joints gave me a couple dollars. I loved that. I'd go back next Saturday.

B.B. King

#37. The crowds treat me like my last name. When I go onstage people usually stand up, I never ask them to, but they do. They stand up and they don't know how much I appreciate it.

B.B. King

#38. A guitar is like an old friend that is there with me.

B.B. King

#39. I'm more careful about my hands than about what I eat and most anything else, because my hands have been my living. My hands have been able to help me learn. My hands have taken me around the world. So I'm very proud of my hands.

B.B. King

#40. I don't care for the music when they're talking bad about women because I think women are God's greatest gift to the planet - I just like music.

B.B. King

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

B.B. King

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

B.B. King

#43. I've seen myself on those lists of the 100 best guitarists, and if they think that I'm that good, thank them. Thank God for them. But I don't think so.

B.B. King

#44. A lot of people believe what other people say.

B.B. King

#45. Janis Joplin sings the blues as hard as any black person.

B.B. King

#46. I've always liked ladies all my life. I guess it started with my mom. So every time I saw a pretty lady, I thought, she's pretty.

B.B. King

#47. I gave you seven children, but now you want to give them back.

B.B. King

#48. I don't like anybody to be angry with me. I'd rather have friends.

B.B. King

#49. I have not been a good father, but no father has loved his children more. Like my father, I decided the best thing I could do for my kids was work and provide. Fortunately, I've been able to do that. Unfortunately, my work was on the road, and that's meant a life of one-nighters.

B.B. King

#50. I can't afford no liquor, all I can buy is beer and wine.

B.B. King

#51. May I live forever. But may you live forever and a day.

B.B. King

#52. I don't think anybody steals anything; all of us borrow.

B.B. King

#53. The blues was like that problem child that you may have had in the family. You was a little bit ashamed to let anybody see him, but you loved him. You just didn't know how other people would take it.

B.B. King

#54. 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.

B.B. King

#55. I never wanted to be like other blues singers. I might like hearing them play, but I've never wanted to be anyone other than myself. There are a few people that I've wished I could play like, but when I tried, it didn't work.

B.B. King

#56. People all over the world have problems. And as long as people have problems, the blues can never die.

B.B. King

#57. I was a singing disc jockey who heard every type of music there was - and loved it all.

B.B. King

#58. 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.

B.B. King

#59. I'm no good with chords. I'm horrible with chords.

B.B. King

#60. The minute I stop singing orally, I start to sing by playing Lucille.

B.B. King

#61. I've always tried to defend the idea that the blues doesn't have to be sung by a person who comes from Mississippi, as I did.

B.B. King

#62. The Blues? It's the mother of American music. That's what is is - the source.

B.B. King

#63. We are here because there are things that need our help. Like the planet. Like each other. Like animals. The world is like a garden, and we are its protectors.

B.B. King

#64. 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.

B.B. King

#65. I'm trying to get people to see that we are our brother's keeper. Red, white, black, brown or yellow, rich or poor, we all have the blues.

B.B. King

#66. No one can take it away from you.

B.B. King

#67. Kenny Burrell is overall the greatest guitarist in the world and he's my favorite.

B.B. King

#68. It seems like I always had to work harder than other people. Those nights when everybody else is asleep, and you sit in your room trying to play scales.

B.B. King

#69. I never use that word, retire.

B.B. King

#70. 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 on the stage each night, I try my best to outguess my audience.

B.B. King

#71. Water from the white fountain didn't taste any better than from the black fountain.

B.B. King

#72. Elvis, he was unique. And he loved the blues, it was a pity he didn't do more.

B.B. King

#73. When I was in the country and I was trying to play, nobody seemed to pay too much attention to me. People used to say, 'That's just that ole blues singer.'

B.B. King

#74. Notes are expensive ... spend them wisely

B.B. King

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

B.B. King

#76. I've put up with more humiliation than I care to remember.

B.B. King

#77. What don't I want to learn? I have how-to books, history, nature. Ain't nobody here saying, 'You'd better learn this.' But I still think I've got a head on my shoulders, and it pleases me.

B.B. King

#78. A day that I don't learn something new is a wasted day.

B.B. King

#79. I think of guitar players in terms of doctors: you have the doctor for your heart, the cardiologist, then one that works on your feet, your leg. But I believe George Benson is the one that plays all over. To me, he would be the M.D. of them all.

B.B. King

#80. If you want to be a good blues singer, people are going to be down on you, so dress like you're going to the bank to borrow money.

B.B. King

#81. Education is the one thing that no one can take from you.

B.B. King

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

B.B. King

#83. Being a blues singer is like being black two times.

B.B. King

#84. 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.

B.B. King

#85. The beautiful thing about education is that no one can take it away from you.

B.B. King

#86. 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.

B.B. King

#87. My dad died, I think, at 87. So I'll be lucky if I make 87. But in a lot of cases, the younger people live longer than their parents. And they know more. My dad used to tell me he ate the hog from his rooter to his tooter. So do I when I'm not trying to lose weight.

B.B. King

#88. I tell my children now that they are older, 'If something happens to me ... don't make no big fuss over me. Don't make no big expense on my funeral. Don't put any pressure on the rest of the family. I've loved everybody, and I hope they loved me. But don't create this big expense for the family.'

B.B. King

#89. You never miss what you've never had. I never had any other life. I didn't know any other life.

B.B. King

#90. Nobody loves me but my mother, and she could be jivin', too.

B.B. King

#91. The way I feel today, as long as my health is good and I can handle myself well and people still come to my concerts, still buy my CDs, I'll keep playing until I feel like I can't.

B.B. King

#92. Sometimes I just think that there are more things to be said to make the audience understand what I'm trying to do more. When I'm singing, I don't want you to just hear the melody. I want you to relive the story, because most of the songs have pretty good storytelling.

B.B. King

#93. My mother was a very beautiful lady, I thought. She was very good to me. I guess - she died when I was nine and a half, but if she had lived, I probably wouldn't be trying to play guitar. She wanted me to be known, but as something else. Not a guitar player.

B.B. King

#94. Whenever I'm in Kansas City, I think back to all the jazz-blues greats who played the blues here - like Count Basie, Charlie Parker and Jay McShann. I watched those guys jam in different places and heard a lot of things - but I couldn't do what they did. They were too good.

B.B. King

#95. The blues was bleeding the same blood as me.

B.B. King

#96. Growing up on the plantation there in Mississippi, I would work Monday through Saturday noon. I'd go to town on Saturday afternoons, sit on the street corner, and I'd sing and play.

B.B. King

#97. 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.

B.B. King

#98. I like jazz, rock n' roll, some hip hop - I can't think of any music I don't like.

B.B. King

#99. The blues are three L's - living , loving and hopefully, laughing.

B.B. King

#100. I'm self-taught. But I finally learned that they was having little shows or night dances or whatever you call them at little juke joints not far from where I lived, and I used to go there. They wouldn't let me play inside, but I could sit outside on the weekends, when it wasn't raining or something.

B.B. King