B. B. King Quotes

All I really wanted was to be a full-time disc jockey.

I wanted to be a blues guitar player. And a singer. And a songwriter. Not a shock jock.

I do remember in high school I wanted to be a disc jockey.

I studied communications, only because I could get my own show on the campus radio station. I never thought of it as a career. Music was always a really passionate hobby - it was like collecting DVDs or stamps.

I loved being on the radio. Being paid to talk? It's like being paid to eat.

I recommend everyone who DJ's to do it as a hobby and make sure you have a day job or are going to school. Only 100 DJ's in the world make a living doing this, by that I mean making a good, comfortable living.

I wanted to be a disc jockey.

When I was growing up, radio DJs were celebrities, not just the people singing the songs.

I really had no aspirations for becoming a DJ, and now I find myself having to campaign to be in the DJ Top 100.

I am amazed at radio DJ's today. I am firmly convinced that AM on my radio stands for Absolute Moron. I will not begin to tell you what FM stands for.

I had written a tune called 'Shake, Rattle and Roll,' but the white stations refused to play it - they thought it was low-class black music. We thought what we needed was a new name. But a white disc jockey named Alan Freed laid on it, and he thought up the name 'rock n' roll.'

That was the big thing when I was growing up, singing on the radio. The extent of my dream was to sing on the radio station in Memphis. Even when I got out of the Air Force in 1954, I came right back to Memphis and started knocking on doors at the radio station.

When I got involved with The Five Crowns who later became The Drifters, and we got this hit record, I still was looking at this as kind of a fun thing.

My dad being a DJ, I heard all the hits, no matter what. My mom always had on the radio because my dad was on it.

A friend of mine took me to Memphis advised me that I should get in the musicians' union. He gave me a set of drums and said, Stay on the job, son.

I wanted to be a radio announcer.

There's one place that I've always known I wanted to be, and that is on country radio.

When I went to Ann Arbor, University of Michigan, what I really wanted to be was a radio announcer.

My stage name has always been 'Armin van Buuren.' When I really started DJ'ing professionally, I already had a few U.K. hits under my belt under the name 'Armin', so I couldn't really change that anymore.

But in those days - in the mid-'50s, early '60s - there was less than 300 radio stations that were playing country music and a lot of that wasn't full time.

I've been DJing mostly, and most DJs end up producing. That's just me.

My first job on the radio was writing jokes for a Baltimore DJ called Johnny Walker, who was sort of a '70s era shock jock who all the teenage boys listened to in my school.

I went to a radio station on Long Island in 1982, and thank goodness for me, it was so new that there was no receptionist. So the DJ opened up his booth, and took my tape and listened to it and thought it was a hit song.

I DJ'd for years. I DJ'd in high school, and I think my parents thought it was a passing thing. And then when I was in my second year of college, I was like, 'Yeah, you guys don't need to send me money anymore. My DJ gigs are good enough. I'm selling music; I think I'm gonna have a record deal. I can pay my tuition.'

I often thought that if I had been working with Mark James at American Studios, I would have had a pop hit before I ever moved out of Memphis. But that didn't happen.