Ben E. King Quotes:- Ben E. King (September 28, 1938 – April 30, 2015) was an American soul and R&B singer and record producer. He rose to prominence as one of the principal lead singers of the R&B vocal group The Drifters, notably singing the lead vocals of one of their biggest global hit singles (and only U.S. No. 1 hit), “Save the Last Dance for Me”.
As a soloist, King is best known as the singer and co-composer of “Stand by Me”, which became a US Top 10 hit, both in 1961 and later in 1986 (when it was used as the theme to the film of the same name), and a number one hit in the United Kingdom in 1987. It was also placed on the RIAA’s list of Songs of the Century.
Inspirational Ben E. King Quotes
“The industry now wants to be in charge of everything.”
Ben E. King
“Yeah. I’ve been pretty fortunate to travel I guess, all around the place.”
Ben E. King
“Those things don’t happen today. I feel sorry for the kids in the industry today. They have on sunglasses and eat caviar in jet planes, but they’ll never know the true feeling that we did.”
Ben E. King
“If there’s anything about the business that I love and that I’m extremely happy about, is that my career started at that time and that I met some of the greatest entertainers at that time and some are still here.”
Ben E. King
“It doesn’t take me long to write songs.”
Ben E. King
“When we took on the name The Drifters, we became the new Drifters, and signed a contract to be put on salary, which I think was like a hundred dollars a week, a piece, five hundred dollars for all five of us.”
Ben E. King
“I’d originally intended ‘Stand By Me’ for the Drifters.”
Ben E. King
“The movie is actually from a book by Stephen King called The Body. When they were gonna put it into a motion picture, they found the story was a bit too strong for the title The Body, based on a young kid’s movie. It would be too heavy.”
Ben E. King
“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.”
Ben E. King
Famous Quotes by Ben E. King
“Many times I’ve gone on tours with Paul Anka. He would have someone sitting behind him to keep people from even talking to him. You were almost in a little restricted area there.”
Ben E. King
“The Phil Spector that I would meet has always been a nice, quiet, little guy who’s very serious about his work; obviously, you can tell that because each and everything he’s ever done has always been charted.”
Ben E. King
“I never even visualized for a second doing what I’m doing.”
Ben E. King
“One minute we can be in a small club, the next minute we can be in a coliseum, and the next minute we can be in a small auditorium. It varies, depending on the promoter, the budget, and the traveling distance.”
Ben E. King
“I do like what Alicia Keys and John Legend are doing. With their music, you keep your clothes on.”
Ben E. King
“He was a manager, one of the singers, I guess talent coordinator for the local talent in Harlem. His name was Lover Patterson. He was living right across the street from where my dad had his restaurant. I guess he saw a lot of kids come in, a lot of my buddies.”
Ben E. King
Top 10 Quotes on Ben E. King
“It would probably take me an hour to two to write it down and get the feel of it, and that’s with quite a few changes. It’s not really a hard thing for me to do.”
Ben E. King
“It never dawned on me at any particular time of my life that people are paid tremendous money to sing.”
Ben E. King
“I do a lot of Vegas work and work with the comedians.”
Ben E. King
“You were able to sing something they related to instantly because it was part of what you felt. It was part of what you had already traveled through. It’s part of the people you were associating with daily. It was all of that.”
Ben E. King
“In my vocal, I think you can hear something of my earlier times when I’d sing in subway halls for the echo and perform doo-wop on street corners. But I had a lot of influences, too – singers like Sam Cooke, Brook Benton, and Roy Hamilton.”
Ben E. King
“One of the members of the group, I can’t remember which one, found out we were making $3 – $5,000 a night. We were getting a hundred dollars a week a piece. Everybody got upset about it.”
Ben E. King
“Yeah. I’m amateurish. I can play enough to write a song or strum on a little guitar to write out a song. But, I don’t play well at all. I wouldn’t even attempt for a second to play in public.”
Ben E. King
