
Throughout the 1990’s as well as the 1980’s, 1970’s, 1960’s and 1950’s, there has been only one King of the Blues – Riley B. King, affectionately known as B.B. King. Since B.B. started recording in the late 1940’s, he has released over fifty albums, many of them considered blues classics, including 1965’s definitive concert album Live At The Regal, 1976’s collaboration with Bobby “Blue” Bland, Together For The First Time, and the Gold-certified Deuces Wild, B.B.s all-star collection of duets released in 1997.
B.B. has been busy touring the globe and recording his new MCA release, Blues On The Bayou. The album marks B.B.s debut as producer, and features his own touring band. Blues On The Bayou was recorded primarily at Dockside Recording Studios in Maurice, Louisiana, and is set for release on October 20.
B.B. describes Blues On The Bayou as one of his most relaxed and personally satisfying albums. Recorded over four days, with no overdubs or high-tech tricks, the collection of new and rediscovered originals captures the essence of B.B. Kings life-long dedication to the blues.
At age 73, B.B. continues to tour extensively, averaging over 250 concerts per year around the world. His classic songs such as “Payin’ The Cost To Be The Boss,” “Caldonia,” How Blue Can You Get,” “Everyday I Have The Blues,” and “Why I Sing The Blues” are concert (and fan) staples.
Over the years, B.B., an 8-time Grammy Award-winner, has had two #1 R&B hits, 1951’s “Three O’Clock Blues,” and 1952’s “You Don’t Know Me,” and four #2 R&B hits, 1953’s “Please Love Me,” 1954’s “You Upset Me Baby,” 1960’s “Sweet Sixteen, Part I,” and 1966’s “Don’t Answer The Door, Part I.” B.B.’s most popular crossover hit, 1970’s “The Thrill Is Gone,” went to #15 pop. Riley B. King was born on September 16, 1925 on a cotton plantation in Itta Bene, Mississippi, just outside the Mississippi delta town of Indianola. In his youth, he played on the corner of Church and Second Street for dimes and would sometimes play in as many as four towns on a Saturday night. In 1947, with his guitar and $2.50, he hitchhiked north to Memphis, Tennessee, to pursue his musical career. Memphis was the city where every important musician of the South gravitated and which supported a large, competitive musical community where virtually every black musical style washeard. B.B. stayed with his cousin Bukka White, one of the most renowned rural blues performers of his time, who schooled B.B. further in the art of the blues.
B.B.’s first big break came in 1948 when he performed on Sonny Boy Williamson’s radio program on KWEM out of West Memphis. This led to steady performance engagements at the Sixteenth Avenue Grill in West Memphis and later to a ten minute spot on black-staffed and managed Memphis radio station WDIA. “King’s Spot,” sponsored by Pepticon, a health tonic, became so popular that it was increased in length and became the “Sepia Swing Club.” Soon, B.B. needed a catchy radio name. What started out as Beale Street Blues Boy was shortened to Blues Boy King, and eventually B.B. King. Incidentally, King’s middle name, B., is just that, it is not an abbreviation.
In the mid-1950’s, while B.B. was performing at a dance in Twist, Arkansas, a few fans became unruly. Two men got into a fight and knocked over a kerosene stove, setting fire to the hall. B.B. raced outdoors to safety with everyone else, then realized that he left his beloved $30 acoustic guitar inside, so he rushed back inside the burning building to retrieve it, narrowly escaping death. When he later found out that the fight had been over a woman named Lucille, he decided to give the name to his guitar. Each one of B.B.’s guitars since that time has been called Lucille.
Soon after his number one hit, Three OClock Blues,” B.B. began touring nationally, and he has never stopped, performing an average of 275 concerts a year. In 1956, B.B. and his band played an astonishing 342 one night stands. From the chitlin circuit with its small-town cafes, ghetto theaters, country dance halls, and roadside joints to jazz clubs, rock palaces, symphony concert halls, universities, resort hotels and amphitheaters, nationally and internationally, B.B. has become the most renowned blues musician of the past 40 years.
While in the army, B.B. was introduced to the music of such guitarists as Charlie Christian and T-Bone Walker. “I heard an electric guitar that wasn’t playing spiritual,” recalls B.B. “It was T-Bone Walker doing Stormy Monday, and that was the prettiest sound I think I ever heard in my life. That’s what really started me to play the blues.”
Over the years, B.B. has developed one of the world’s most readily identified guitar styles. He borrowed from Lonnie Johnson, Blind Lemon Jefferson, T-Bone Walker and others, integrating his precise and complex vocal-like string bends and his left hand vibrato, both of which have become indispensable components of rock guitarists vocabulary. His economy, his every-note-counts phrasing, has been a model for thousands of players including Eric Clapton, George Harrison, and Jeff Beck.
B.B. has mixed traditional blues, jazz, swing, mainstream pop and jump into a unique sound. His singing is richly melodic, both vocally and in the “singing” that comes from his guitar. In B.B’s words, “When I sing, I play in my mind; the minute I stop singing orally, I start to sing by playing Lucille.” “From my own experience, I would say to all people, but maybe to young people especially black, white or whatever color, follow your own feelings and trust them; find out what you want to do and do it and then practice it every day of your life and keep becoming what you are despite any hardships and obstacles you meet. I’m trying to get people to see that we are our brother’s keeper — I still work on it. Red, white, black, brown, yellow, rich, poor, we all have the blues.”
Im me,” B.B. told Time Magazine in 1969, “Blues is what I do best. If Frank Sinatra can be the best in his field, Nat King Cole in his, Bach and Beethoven in theirs, why can’t I be great, and known for it, in blues?” Sidney A. Seidenberg, B.B.’s longtime manager, likens B.B. to Louis Armstrong and Frank Sinatra. “B.B.’s goals have always been to be like an American Ambassador of blues music to the world, like Louis Armstrong and Frank Sinatra are to the jazz world.
B.B. is still the King of the Blues.” In 1968, B.B. played at the Newport Folk Festival and at Bill Graham’s Fillmore West on bills with the hottest contemporary rock artists of the day who idolized B.B. and helped to introduce him to a young white audience. In 1969, B.B. was chosen by the Rolling Stones to open 18 American concerts for them; Ike and Tina Turner also played on 18 shows.
B.B. has influenced Eric Clapton, Mike Bloomfield, Albert Collins, Buddy Guy, Freddie King, Jimi Hendrix, Otis Rush, Johnny Winter, Albert King and many others while being influenced by Charles Brown, Lowell Fulsom, Elmore James, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Jimmy Rushing, T-Bone Walker, Bukka White and others.
B.B. was inducted into the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame in 1984 and into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987, where Sting made the induction speech. He is a founding member of the John F. Kennedy Performing Arts Center. B.B. received NARAS Lifetime Achievement Grammy Award in 1987. B.B. has received four honorary doctorates: Tougaloo (Mississippi) College (LH.D.) in 1973; Yale University (D. Music) in 1977; Berklee College of Music (D. Music) in 1982; and Rhodes College of Memphis (D. Fine Arts) in 1990. In 1992, he received the National Award of Distinction from the University of Mississippi.
On May 3, 1991, “B.B. King’s Blues Club” opened on Beale Street in Memphis, and in 1994, a second club was launched at Universal CityWalk in Los Angeles. In 1996, the B.B. King
CD-Rom, On The Road With B.B. King: An Interactive Autobiography was released to rave reviews. Also in 1996, B.B.s autobiography, Blues All Around Me (written with David Ritz) (Avon) was published. In a similar vein, The Arrival of B.B. King, by Charles Sawyer, was published in 1980 by Doubleday.
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