The man synonymous with the blues, B.B. King, died on Thursday at age 89.

Almost 30 years ago, he recorded this interview with Warner Bros. A&R manager Joe Smith, which PBS’s Blank on Blank turned into a short animated video. The video offers insight into the mind of a legendary musician, and in it, King talks about everything from his journeyman work ethic to how you don’t need to be sad to sing the blues (but it helps).

Hard times don’t necessarily mean being poor all the time. I’ve known people that was part of a family and always feel that the family likes everybody else but them. That hurts and that’s as deep a hurt as you can possibly get. I’ve known people that would have problems with their love life. This is kind of how the blues began, out of feeling misused, mistreated, feeling like they had nobody to turn to.

Blues don’t necessarily have to be sung by a person that came from Mississippi as I did, because there are people having problems all over the world.

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