One of the best-known and best-loved blues musicians, B. B. King is a musical ambassador who has been spreading the blues gospel worldwide for nearly 50 years. He is also a highly respected and influential guitarist.
Riley B. King was born on September 16, 1925, near Itta Bena, Mississippi. He bought his first guitar at age 12, and sang spirituals with gospel groups as a teenager. After a period in the military, King moved to Memphis, where he lived with and learned from his cousin, country blues singer and guitarist Bukka White. King was particularly taken with White’s slideguitar playing, but f o u nd he was unable to emulate it with the usual steel or glass device, so he learned to create the slide sound by using his fingers. “I was looking for ways to let my guitar sing,” King said, explaining his technique. “I wanted to sustain a note like a singer. I wanted to phrase a note like a saxist. By bending the strings, by trilling my hand … I could achieve something that approached a vocal vibrato.” The technique that King developed as a consequence contributes to the fluid quality of his playing. He has a warm, deep, singing voice, and the jazz influence is apparent in both his guitar work and his use of brass instruments and saxophones in his band.
In 1948, King got a job singing and playing in a commercial on Memphis’s WDIA radio station. He moved up to DJ, calling himself “Riley King, the Beale Street Blues Boy,” later shortened to “Blues Boy King,” then simply “B. B.”
King played the club scene at night, and on one such night in an Arkansas club in 1949, an event occurred that has remained significant for King. Two men fighting over a woman named Lucille knocked over a kerosene heater, setting the club on fire. King fled, then ran back inside to rescue his guitar. He has named his guitars Lucille ever since.
King scored his first rhythm-and-blues (R&B) chart hit with “Three O’clock in the Morning.” When it reached No. 1 early in 1952, he embarked on a tour that has effectively never ended. Between 1951 and 1968 King had 31 R&B hits—but success did not come without a great deal of hard work. He averaged more than 300 performances a year for many years, mostly playing clubs, roadhouses, and large urban theatres that catered to African-Americans.
King then became a regular at rock concerts and festivals during the blues revival of the late 1960s, when white guitarists, such as Eric Clapton and Mike Bloomfield, began promoting him. Several rock bands started to include King songs in their repertoires, finding that he and other blues artists such as Willie DIXON and namesake Albert KING, had a treasure-trove of material. King’s most famous song, “The Thrill Is Gone,” was a pop hit in 1969. Since then he has become world famous, appearing on television numerous times, playing o n six continents and receiving dozens of awards and honours, including seven Grammy Awards.
King has released more than 70 albums throughout his career and still performs about 250 nights a year. He owns a string of nightclubs, and a line of products bears his name. Despite achieving fame and fortune, King is known for his w a rm and generous personality, both o n and off stage. He remains a consummate entertainer who projects dignity and showmanship in his performances. More than most musicians, he deserves to be called “the ki ng of blues.”
Stan Hieronymus
SEE ALSO:
BLUES; CREAM; HOOKER, JOHN LEE; ROCK MUSIC; SOUL.
FURTHER READING
Danchin, Sebastian. Blues Boy
(Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 1998);
King, B. B., and David Ritz. Blues All Around Me: The Autobiography of B. B. King (New York: Avon, 1996);
Sawyer, Charles. B. B. King: The Authorised Biography (Poole: Blandford, 1981).
SUGGESTED LISTENING
Best of B. B. King Vols. 1 and 2;
Live at the Apollo … with the Philip Morris Superband; Live at the Regal; There Must Be a Better World Somewhere.