Top 46 Quotes & Sayings by Ben E. King
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American celebrity Ben E. King.
Last updated on April 21, 2025.
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.
At that time, we were in charge. We didn't ask. We just did. We just did what was in our heart.
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 travelling distance.
I do a lot of Vegas work and work with the comedians.
I never even visualized for a second doing what I'm doing.
It would probably take me an hour to two to write it down, get the feel of it, and that's with quite a few changes. It's not really a hard thing for me to do.
We were doing things with a hundred per cent feeling. It wasn't programmed. It wasn't asked for. It wasn't structured. It was just there. It was very raw. I don't think the industry would allow that to happen again.
It doesn't take me long to write songs.
I still think my whole career was accidental. I didn't pursue it. I feel like I'm cheating sometimes.
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.
And, because there was an honesty about all that was going on. It connected with the people in the street.
The movie is actually from a book by Stephen King called The Body. When they were gonna put it to 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.
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.
Of course, the kids who had never heard of a person called Ben E. King were then aware of the name associated with the song. That gave a tremendous lift to me as an artist.
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.
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.
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.
Yeah. I've been pretty fortunate to travel I guess, all around the place.
It never dawned on me at any particular time of my life that people are paid tremendous money to sing.
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.
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.
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.
I do like what Alicia Keys and John Legend are doing. With their music, you keep your clothes on.
Those things don't happen today. I feel sorry for the kids in the industry today. They have on sunglasses, eat caviar in jet planes, but they'll never know the true feeling that we did.
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.
I'd originally intended 'Stand By Me' for the Drifters.
The industry now wants to be in charge of everything.
A singer has got a different attitude, they're they're so whacked out they don't know what they're doing half the time. Singers, they don't, they're spoiled too.
If you just concentrate on what you're doing and allow yourself to actually enjoy and let your feelings come out, whatever the tempos, whatever the rhythms, whatever the songs, 9 out of 10 times it will work.
It's a different thing when you go into a studio and you record with the intent of going somewhere and you're marketing yourself for that direction.
I think that the song, the song "Stand By Me" is one of those songs that... and someone asked me, what was you thinking about or what was you feeling about? It's something that, songwriters just write songs. It's like an artist that paints. They paint what they feel. It's not, it's not about how many of these painting I'll sell it's just how they feel at the moment. And that's how I wrote "Stand By Me".
When the night has come and the land is dark and the moon is the only light we see. No, I won't be afraid, no, I won't be afraid, just as long as you stand, stand by me.
In New York, I was excited about the music in New York because the only music that I was more or less involved with in the South was either country and western or hillbilly music as we used to call it when I was a kid and, ah, gospel. There was no, there was no in between. And when I got to New York all the other musics that's in the world just came into my head whether it was the classics, jazz, I never knew what jazz was about all, had heard anything about jazz.
I always felt I never chose music, it chose me.
I would imagine after the first recording session with Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller and Atlantic Records I began to realize that this is going to be like this for the rest of my life and I knew that what, what they were doing was going to be successful because with each session that we would do, it would get better and better and better, the songs would become better, the, ah, the feeling of success was there and we were all in the middle of that as well.
You take a chance to do something and you realize in your heart it's either going to be the greatest thing that ever happened or the worst thing that ever happened. It won't be an in between, I almost made a hit. It will be an instant flop or an instant success.
I'm a songwriter. So I'm OK. But when I wrote "Stand By Me" as a song and to know that the song will probably be here for hundred and hundreds of years to come, it's great, you know. And it was just simple lyrics.
Most black singers like to slow the word down and, and go directly to your heart. They're not interested in your ears, we just want to go directly to your heart.
I don't care what studio I'm in, I don't care what producers is producing it and I don't care what song it is because they taught me those things I feel so protected wherever I go as far as music.
If the sky that we look upon should tumble and fall. Or the mountain should crumble to the sea. I won't cry, no I won't shed a tear, just as long as you stand by me.
I enjoyed singing, I loved song writing, I loved recording. All those things that involves with creating music was great.
People abroad always tend to take what the best of what we have and come back through the back door always, say, and hit us with it. And then we wake up one day and say, I think I've heard that. Yeah, it was done by whoever, you know. So, ah, that's been one of our weaknesses we don't tend to hold on as they do there.
One of the hardest things in the world is to perform on record and get someone to enjoy and feel what you're doing. It's unlike, like TV you can, you can fake it with the face and the crying and the bits. Recording is completely different.
You're writing it is how you feel. And when you're finished you put your signature on it and you mail it off and that's it. And that's how "Stand By Me" was really.
During those times like in my early years as a writer I could actually write a song in ten minutes because all of a sudden a song is writing itself, I'm just putting down words. It just seem each line that you put down flows with the other ones. It's like writing a love letter you don't think about it, it's something from the heart.
I still perform it in all my shows. I'll do it as long as I'm breathing. I'm so proud it has stood the test of time.
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