B.B. King, whose full name was Riley B. King, was a highly influential American blues guitarist, singer, and songwriter. He was born on September 16, 1925, in Itta Bena, Mississippi, and passed away on May 14, 2015, in Las Vegas, Nevada. B.B. King is considered one of the greatest guitarists of all time and is often referred to as “The King of the Blues.”
King’s career spanned over six decades, during which he achieved significant success and made a profound impact on the blues genre. He was known for his distinctive guitar playing style, characterized by soulful, expressive bending of notes and a precise, emotive touch. King’s guitar, a Gibson ES-355 named “Lucille,” became iconic and synonymous with his sound.
Throughout his career, B.B. King released numerous albums and achieved several hit songs, including “The Thrill Is Gone,” “Sweet Little Angel,” and “Rock Me Baby.” His music blended traditional blues with elements of jazz, soul, and gospel, creating a unique and influential sound that inspired generations of musicians.
B. B. King Quotes
1. “A guitar is like an old friend that is there with me.” -B. B. King
2. “You only live but once, and when your died your done, so let the good times roll.”-B. B. King
3. “And as long as people have problems, the blues can never die.”-B. B. King
4. “Playing guitar is like telling the truth.”-B. B. King
5. “No one can take it away from you.”-B. B. King
6. “May I live forever. But may you live forever and a day.”-B. B. King
7. “The blues are three L’s – living, loving and hopefully, laughing.”-B. B. King
8. “I gave you seven children, but now you want to give them back.”-B. B. King
9. “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
10. “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
11. “I didn’t want to disrespect my parents, so I never played blues around the house. But I knew then, the 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
12. “If you can’t get your songs to people one way, you have to find another.”-B. B. King
13. “There are so many sounds I still want to make, so many things I haven’t yet done.”-B. B. King
14. “Back when we was in school in Mississippi, we had Little Black Sambo. That’s what you learned: Anytime something was not good, or anytime something was bad in some kinda way, it had to be called black. Like, you had Black Monday, Black Friday, black sheep… Of course, everything else, all the good stuff, is white. White Christmas and such.”-B. B. King
15. “I never met a woman I didn’t like. I love ’em all, in their different ways.”-B. B. King
16. “My wife Martha used to call me Ol’ Lemon Face because of my facial contortions when I play Lucille. I squeeze my eyes and open my mouth, raise my eyebrows, cock my head and God knows what else. I look like I’m in torture when in truth, I’m in ecstasy. I don’t do it for show. Every fiber of my being is tingling.”-B. B. King
17. “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
18. “The beautiful thing about learning is nobody can take it away from you.”-B. B. King
19. “Everybody wants to go to Heaven, but no one wants to die to get there!”-B. B. King
20. “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
21. “When I do eventually drop, I pray to God that it’ll happen in one of three ways. Firstly, on stage or leaving the stage, then secondly in my sleep. And the third way? You’ll have to figure that out for yourself!”-B. B. King
22. “Blues is a tonic for whatever ails you. I could play the blues and then not be blue anymore.”-B. B. King
23. “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
24. “I almost chopped my thumb off once. Just before I left home, I was about ten or eleven years old, and I was trying to open a bone. Can you imagine that? A bone! I was trying to get the marrow out of a bone, and I took the ax, and I went to chop it, and something slipped, and the ax went right down there and damn near cut it off.”-B. B. King
25. “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
26. “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
27. “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
28. “I never use that word, retire.”-B. B. King
29. “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
30. “I don’t try to just be a blues singer—I try to be an entertainer. That has kept me going.”-B. B. King
31. “I started to like blues, I guess when I was about 6 or 7 years old. There was something about it, because nobody else played that kind of music.”-B. B. King
32. “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.”-B. B. King
33. “As for my band, well, my mentors were Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Jimmie Lunceford, and no one had a band more smartly dressed than Duke.”-B. B. King
34. “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 meant a life of one-nighters.”-B. B. King
35. “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
36. “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
37. “I would sit on the street corners in my hometown of Indianola, Mississippi, and I would play. And, generally, I would start playing gospel songs. People would come by on the street – you live in Time Square, you know how they do it—they would bunch up. And they would always compliment me on gospel tunes, but they would tip me when I played blues.”-B. B. King
38. “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
39. “A day that I don’t learn something new is a wasted day.”-B. B. King
40. “Education is the one thing that no one can take from you.”-B. B. King
41. “Music is good for everybody. They say it soothes the savage beast. Well, I think theirs a beast in all of us. So let’s get some more music and soothe all the beasts out there.”-B. B. King
42. “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
43. “I can’t afford no liquor, all I can buy is beer and wine.”-B. B. King
44. “I wanted to connect my guitar to human emotions.”-B. B. King
45. “Religion began as a natural explanation of the universe. The problem started when people refused to accept new evidence.”-B. B. King
46. “I’ve said that playing the blues is like having to be black twice. Stevie Ray Vaughan missed on both counts, but I never noticed.”-B. B. King
47. “Elvis, he was unique. And he loved the blues, it was a pity he didn’t do more.”-B. B. King
48. “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
49. “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
50. “The Blues? It’s the mother of American music. That’s what is is – the source.”-B. B. King
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