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. KingRead
We all have idols. Play like anyone you care about but try to be yourself while you're doing so.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Embrace your influences but remain true to yourself.
This quote by B. B. King emphasizes the importance of having role models and influences in our lives while also reminding us that authenticity is essential. It signifies that while we can be inspired by others, our unique identity should always shine through in our actions and expressions.
Themes
IdolsAuthenticityInfluenceSelfMusic
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about following your passion in music and staying true to your sound.
More from B. B. King
All quotes βThe 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. KingRead
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.
B. B. KingRead
A guitar is like an old friend that is there with me.
B. B. KingRead
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. KingRead
People all over the world have problems. And as long as people have problems, the blues can never die.
B. B. KingRead
Similar quotes
So I asked him to play "Trav'lin' All Alone." That came closer than anything to the way I felt. And some part of it must have come across. The whole joint quieted down. If someone had dropped a pin, it would have sounded like a bomb. When I finished, everybody in the joint was crying in their beer, and I picked thirty-eight bucks up off the floor. . . . When I showed Mom the money for the rent and told her I had a regular job singing for eighteen dollars a week, she could hardly believe it.
Billie HolidayRead
People in bands don't have the kind of conversations people might think they have. The best things about being in a band are the things that are unsaid.
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I wrote my first song at 12 and remember someone asking, 'What were you going through at 12 that you could write about?' I get what you're saying, but 11, 12, 13 were the hardest years of my life. You learn everything. You learn how horrible things feel.
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All music is based on country music. And that's why so many different kinds of people relate to it. There are more country music fans in New Jersey than there are down South.
Loretta LynnRead
Record labels collude with some of the radio stations, and the radio stations have their play lists, dependent upon what they call the, quote, 'hits.' What's commercially viable gets recycled, endlessly repeated, and as a result of that, the progressive music can't break in.
Michael Eric DysonRead
One thing that sticks in my mind is that jazz means freedom and openness. It's a music that, although it developed out of the African American experience, speaks more about the human experience than the experience of a particular people.
Herbie HancockRead