B.B. King

“[His] music, born of his vision, worried into perfection over years of hard meticulous work, has shaped and colored the whole of the modern blues to the degree that virtually no performer of the music since his time has escaped the pull of its all-persuasive influence. He has become the single most popular and successful of all blues performers of modern times. The real foundation of his music, no less than his great success, has been the direct, earthy fundamentalism of the blues which he continues to perform with a brilliant, fervent contemporaneity of feeling as have few others.”—Writer Pete Welding in the blues history “Bluesland”

“I don’t class myself other than just a blues singer,” B. B. King.

B. B. King is in the eighth decade of his life (he turned 80 in 2005) and can probably lay claim to being America’s most active senior, as well as giving James Brown competition as “The Hardest Working Man In Show Business.” King is in his seventh decade as a performer, having moved from small town street corner for nickels and dimes to big city concert halls for top dollar. As a recording artist, he celebrates his sixth decade, with million sellers and 14 Grammy® Awards on his resume. B. B. King is, and remains, a force of nature, still at the top of his game and still looking down new musical avenues in which to present his brand of the blues. And, as ever, he lives his life by the clicking of the odometer. Not for B.B.. King the road less traveled.

He continues to tour today just as he has done for the past 60+ years, although in more comfort than in the early years of rickety, drafty, bone-crunching buses, playing the juke joints, tobacco barns, gin mills, hole-in-the-wall clubs, bars and funky saloons that comprised the ƒº±“chitlin circuit” for black blues and R&B musicians and became a convenient form of segregation. Today King’s transport comes equipped with dressing room, allowing him to step out—all tux’d and ready to play—from bus door to stage door. King may have moved his touring schedule down a notch from the early average of 300 gigs a year—in 1958 he clocked in a bone-wearying total of 342 one nighters—to around 150 but, with the powerful William Morris Agency behind him, still remains in the top financial bracket, just as he has for the past 30+ years. This was the time when King exerted his potent crossover appeal and took his blues brand to youthful rock audiences.

Today they are building a Museum for B.B. King down in Indianola, Miss. (pop: 12,000). The B.B. King Museum and Delta Interactive Center will serve as a combined B.B. King showcase, learning facility, recording studio and tourist attraction. It will cost $10 million and the Governor has already authorized $2 Million in state bonds to jump start the project. This is heady stuff for Riley B. King (B.B. King’s real name) who was raised in this area initially by a single mother. (He was born Sept. 16, 1925) “From age nine I worked here, laboring on the farm and by 12, I had a mule and a plow and was getting 415 a month,” he recalls. “I picked cotton at 35 cents a 100 lbs. 'Pretty good at it too. I could pick 500 lbs of cotton a day on a good day.” Back then, B.B. King had an aunt, married to a preacher who played guitar during his services. This was B.B. King’s introduction to the instrument he would later call Lucille. He taught himself how to play, usually on Sunday afternoons after services. “I had no interest in the blues,” he says surprisingly. “I thought I might get somewhere in the spiritual field. I was raised in a spiritual type background.”

Enter another Auntie! This one, a young teenager, had a record collection, all 78 rpm recordings and a lot of them were blues recordings, mostly non electric country blues by such showman as Blind Lemon Jefferson and Robert Johnson. It was B.B. King’s first taste of the music that would shape his life. He also heard some jazz guitarists and early electric bluesmen such as T. Bone Walker, Charlie Christian and the French musician Django Reinhardt. All went into the mix. (B.B. King’s name for his guitars, Lucille, comes from the time when he ran into a burning juke joint, at great danger to himself, to rescue his $30 acoustic. The fire broke out because two men were fighting over a woman. Her name? Lucille. “So I call my guitars Lucille to remind myself not to do anything stupid over a woman.” It has not exactly worked, he admits, but he tries!) King started playing on street corners, in three or four small towns nearby. This was out of regard for his “spiritual type background.” Don’t play the blues too close to home. He would, however, come home from these al fresco weekend outings with $25 to $30 in his pocket, enough for him to reconsider his career walking behind a mule!

Nearby Memphis called and in 1947 B.B. King arrived in the city to sample the big city bright lights along Beale Street and the possibility of a real career in music. He checked in with his cousin Bukka White, a country blues player who had been recording then for 20 years and who was to have a new career in the 60s when the folk music boom kicked in. Cousin Bukka became another influence, as did Sonny Boy Williamson No 2, an eccentric blues harp player and singer in Memphis, who guided some radio work in King’s direction. From the early days, King’s ears absorbed and soaked up everything. He was on his way to creating the B.B. King style that would be a dominating force a few years down the road. And Memphis was the place to be—a blues crossroads (literally) that supported a strong musical community for every kind of black music. B.B. King’s first real public exposure came as a kind of disk jockey/performer on black-owned Station WDIA. It evolved into a 10 minute show sponsored by Pepticon, a health tonic. It was unpaid at first but allowed King to promote his own gigs over the airwaves.

He was, however, known as The Pepticon Boy, not the flashiest name for a blues man. A number of other names were tested: King: The Boy From Beale Street, the Beale Street Blues Boy and finally B.B. King. “People had started just calling me B.B. so it fit in,” he says. In 1949 B.B. King began his still-continuing recording career, cutting a number of sides for a now-forgotten Nashville label. A year later he cut Three O’Clock Blues, his first hit and the recording that found King his audience, a real booking agency and access to all the major R&B clubs.

A No. 1 R&B hit, “Three O’Clock Blues” opened up the road for King and started that odometer clickingƒºÝ Among King’s many classics are “The Thrill Is Gone,” “Payin’ The Cost To Be The Boss,” “Everyday I Have The Blues,” “You Don’t Know Me” and “Why I Sing The Blues.” B.B. King’s early recordings found their way to Britain, usually imported by specialty stores. And the audience for these recordings was also special: young white boys with names like Jagger, Clapton, Beck, Harrison, in groups with such names as Bluesbreakers, Yardbirds, Animals ... all part of an emerging blues scene that was to combine with rock and become the dominant popular music of the time. King became a hero and King embraced them—n astute commercial move (he has always been aware of his value both in artistic and dollar terms) because it took him into new venues—rock clubs, stadiums, arenas, festivals and the like. He toured and recorded with the British Invasion crowd (Eric Clapton, the Rolling Stones, Van Morrison, Elton John, U2 and others), established permanent footholds in the European markets and established himself as a global entity as both a performer and recording artist.

As B.B. King’s career progressed, touring and recording (to date, more than 70 albums bear his name), some honors began to roll in. A sampling: Lifetime Achievement Grammy Award (1987) to go with his 14 other Grammy Awards, inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (87), Blues Foundation Hall of Fame (84), seven W.C. Handy Foundation Entertainer of the Year Awards, honorary doctorates from Yale U., Berklee College, Rhodes College, of Memphis, Mississippi Valley State U. and a National Award of Distinction from the U. of Mississippi. He also represents the National Diabetes Association (he suffers from the disease) and appears in TV commercials showing that a diabetic can lead a fulfilled, active life. If not B.B. King, who?

Late last year, Bulfinch Press published a major, briskly selling book on the musician, titled B.B. King's Treasures, a combination biography and collector’s edition, which has proven to be a popular keepsake. B.B. King also has his own chain of blues clubs across the country, starting with Memphis in 1994. The New York club was the scene of a very special event in King’s career in 2006—his 10,000th performance. “I admit I've lost count of the number of gigs I’ve made but some statistician worked it out. It could be more but I don’t think it’s less!,” says King. “I may live in Las Vegas now but the road is my real home.” When sidelined for cataract surgery a couple of years ago, King noted: “I have not had three months off in 57 years. Home is any place I stay for three nights!” B.B. King is well aware that he is the last of the great ones still working, but he is philosophical about it. He told writer George Vargas: “One of the great joys for me is ... to think that people appreciate what I’ve done ... that makes me feel I’ve been kind of productive, somewhat.” Another typical piece of understatement from the “King of the Blues.”

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