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B. B. King has a classy new album called "One Kind Favor." It consists of a solid hour of jazzy blues, ranging from Blind Lemon Jefferson's "See That My Grave Is Kept Clean" to Lonnie Johnson's "Tomorrow Night," performed with passionate insouciance by a band featuring pianist Dr. John. On September 13, three days prior to his 83rd birthday, King will preside over the opening of the B. B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center in his hometown of Indianola, MS. Having played some 15,000 shows during the past 52 years, King still performs more evenings than not. So I wasn't surprised to find him in a Florida hotel room when we spoke by phone recently.

AARP: What's the concept behind "One Kind Favor"?

King: If I was going to pretend I had an idea, or was trying to make a point, I would say it's back to the beginning, somewhat. I'm trying to play some of the things I did when I first started. Not thinking about the times, contemporary music, or anything of that sort, but just doin' it. I'd have to say the theme would be: from the beginning.

AARP: You still perform hundreds of shows a year. How do you keep the experience fresh for yourself?

King: It's kind of like doing this interview. You ask me a question and I try to answer it. It's the same thing onstage. I try to play something that makes sense to me, and hopefully it makes sense to others. I never try to do exactly what I did last night or the night before; I try to do it as I feel it now. "The Thrill Is Gone" played better than anything else I ever made solo, and I play it every night. But I tell my band to play it as they feel it each night. Play the chord progression, but put yourself in it as you feel tonight, not like you felt last night. I like doing that, it keeps it fresh.

AARP: What makes you happiest these days?

King: Being onstage and playing to people who seem to be enjoying it is the happiest time of my life. But I'm also a family person. I have friends and acquaintances I love, too. But the happiest thing for B.B. King is when I'm onstage trying to entertain people. If I feel they get it, that is.

AARP: Are there many nights when you think they don't get it?

King: Yes. I have a motto: Always do your best. When I was in grade school, there was a poem a teacher used to tell us. I don't remember it verbatim, but part of it went something like, "Be thou great or small, do it well or not at all." I think about doing the best I can do each and every night I go onstage. But a lot of nights my best is nowhere as good as I'd like it to be.

AARP: Do you feel very different onstage today than you did when you were, say, in your 30s?

King: I can't compare that so much. When I go onstage today, it's business. And when I say business, I mean you're out there trying to say, "Here I am. I'm the blues singer, the entertainer. This is what I do, and I'm going to try to do it the best I can." But when I was younger, it didn't matter. I was having a good time, so... There's an old saying: "I hope you get yours, 'cause I got mine." But today it's different. I want the audience to get theirs. I'm not playin' for myself. I do that in my room.

AARP: What do you play for yourself in your room?

King: When I practice, which is seldom...I've never practiced as I should. But usually when I put on new strings myself – the guitar sounds better when it's got new strings – I play whatever strikes my fancy at the time. I've never tried to play what's on the record player verbatim other than when I was trying to mimic some of my idols. And I could never ever ever play like neither one of 'em. So I guess that's why I play so weird today. Because I could never do what they did.

AARP: Who were your idols?

King: Lonnie Johnson seemed to be the link between jazz and blues, country and blues, gospel and blues. He seemed to be able to fit into any type of music we hear in the Western world. I still want to be like that. Then I had a blues player called Lemon Jefferson who was born blind, according to what I read. He was from Texas, and he had a way of playing that seemed to go through me like a sword.

I also had a friend who went into the army the same time as I did, but he had duty overseas. He heard of a group called the Hot Club of France, and the leader of the group was called Django Reinhardt, a jazz player with a fantastic style on guitar. When my friend came back on furlough, he brought me some Django records and I fell in love with him. I also heard of another guitarist, one of the first blacks to be integrated into a white band, a guy called Charlie Christian. He played with Benny Goodman, who hired him the first time he heard Christian play – and he'd never had a black person in his group before, according to what I read. And finally, I went crazy for another Texan I heard playing single-string blues on electric guitar, and his name was T-Bone Walker. So all of those men were my idols, and still are. I have them on my mp3 player now – and still cannot play like 'em.

AARP: Looking back over your career, would you have done anything differently?

King: If I could live my life again, I would have finished high school and gone to college. I would have majored in computers, minored in music, and wouldn't have gotten married until after I was 40. But I loved the way I grew up, with the exception of the segregated part of it. We grew up poor. I learned to love people. I learned to live with people. I learned that I didn't know it all. I also believe that no man's an island. I need people, and that I would never change.