B. B. King
Riley B. King, known professionally as B.B. King, was an American blues guitarist, singer, songwriter, and record producer. He introduced a sophisticated style of soloing based on fluid string bending, shimmering vibrato, and staccato picking that influenced many later electric guitar blues players. AllMusic recognized King as "the single most important electric guitarist of the last half of the 20th century".
He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987 and is one of the most influential blues musicians in history, earning the nickname "The King of the Blues", and is referred to as one of the "Three Kings of the Blues Guitar". King performed tirelessly throughout his musical career, appearing on average at more than 200 concerts a year into his 70s. In 1956 alone, he appeared at 342 shows.
Born and raised in the Mississippi Delta, he was attracted to music and taught himself to play guitar, beginning his career in juke joints and on local radio. King later lived and performed in Memphis and Chicago. As his fame grew, he toured the world extensively.
Early life
Riley B. King was born on September 16, 1925, on a cotton plantation in Berclair named Bear Creek in Leflore County near the city of Itta Bena, Mississippi, the son of sharecroppers Albert and Nora Ella King. When he was four years old, his mother left his father for another man, so he was raised by his maternal grandmother, Elnora Farr, in Kilmichael, Mississippi, then in Lexington. As a teen, he moved to Indianola which he referred to as his hometown, later working at a cotton gin.While young, King sang in the gospel choir at Elkhorn Baptist Church in Kilmichael. He was attracted to the Pentecostal Church of God in Christ because of its music. The local minister performed with a Sears Roebuck Silvertone guitar during services and taught King his first three chords. Flake Cartledge, his employer in Kilmichael, bought him his first guitar
for 15 dollars. Cartledge withheld money from King's salary for the next two months until he repaid the debt.
In November 1941, King Biscuit Time first aired, broadcasting on KFFA in Helena, Arkansas. It was a radio show featuring the Mississippi Delta blues. King listened to it while on break at the plantation. A self-taught guitarist, he then wanted to be a radio musician.
In 1943, King left Kilmichael to work as a tractor driver and play guitar with the Famous St. John's Gospel Singers of Inverness, Mississippi, performing at area churches and on WGRM in Greenwood. He served in the U.S. Army during World War II but was released after being ruled as "essential to the war economy" based on his experience as a tractor driver.
In 1946, he followed his cousin Bukka White to Memphis, Tennessee. White took him in for the next ten months. King returned shortly afterward to Mississippi where he better prepared himself for the next visit. Two years later, he returned to West Memphis, Arkansas. He performed on Sonny Boy Williamson's radio program on KWEM in West Memphis where he began to develop an audience. His appearances led to steady engagements at the Sixteenth Avenue Grill in West Memphis and later to a ten minute spot on the Memphis radio station WDIA. The radio spot became so popular that it was expanded and became the Sepia Swing Club.
He worked at WDIA as a singer and disc jockey where he was given the nickname "Beale Street Blues Boy", later shortened to "Blues Boy" and finally to "B.B." It was there that he first met T-Bone Walker. King said, "Once I'd heard him for the first time, I knew I'd have to have myself. 'Had' to have one, short of stealing!"
Career
1949–2005
In the late 1940s and early 1950s, King was a part of the blues scene on Beale Street. "Beale Street was where it all started for me," he said. He performed with Bobby Bland, Johnny Ace and Earl Forest in a group known as the Beale Streeters.According to King and Joe Bihari, one of the founders of Modern Records and its subsidiaries, Ike Turner introduced King to the Bihari brothers while he was a talent scout for them. Before his RPM contract, King had debuted on Bullet Records by issuing the single "Miss Martha King", which did not chart well. "My very first recordings were for a company out of Nashville called Bullet, the Bullet Record Transcription company," King recalled. "I had horns that very first session. I had Phineas Newborn on piano; his father played drums, and his brother, Calvin, played guitar with me. I had Tuff Green on bass, Ben Branch on tenor sax, his brother, Thomas, on trumpet, and a lady trombone player. The Newborn family were the house band at the famous Plantation Inn in West Memphis."
In 1949, King began recording songs under contract with Los Angeles-based RPM Records, a subsidiary of Modern. Sam Phillips, who later founded Sun Records, produced many of King's early recordings.
King assembled his band, the B.B. King Review, under the leadership of Millard Lee. The band initially consisted of native-Houston trumpet player Calvin Owens and Kenneth Sands, Lawrence Burdin, George Coleman, Floyd Newman, Millard Lee, George Joyner and Earl Forest and Ted Curry. King hired Onzie Horne, a trained musician, to be an arranger and assist him with his compositions. By his admission, King could not play chords well and always relied on improvisation.
King supported his recordings by touring across the United States with performances in major theaters in cities such as Washington, D.C., Chicago, Los Angeles, Detroit, and St. Louis, as well as numerous gigs in small clubs and juke joints in the southern United States. During one show in Twist, Arkansas, a brawl broke out between two men and caused a fire. He left the building with the rest of the crowd but ran back in to get his guitar. He said he later learned that the two men were fighting over a woman named Lucille. He named the guitar Lucille as a reminder not to fight over women, or run into any more burning buildings.
Following his first Billboard Rhythm and Blues charted number one, "3 O'Clock Blues", King became one of the most important names in R&B music in the 1950s, amassing an impressive list of hits including "You Know I Love You", "Woke Up This Morning", "Please Love Me", "When My Heart Beats Like a Hammer", "Whole Lotta' Love", "You Upset Me Baby", "Every Day I Have the Blues", "Sneakin' Around", "Ten Long Years", "Bad Luck", "Sweet Little Angel", "On My Word of Honor", and "Please Accept My Love". This led to a significant increase in his weekly earnings, from about $85 to $2,500, with appearances at major venues such as the Howard Theater in Washington and the Apollo in New York, as well as touring the "Chitlin' Circuit". 1956 became a record-breaking year, with 342 concerts booked and three recording sessions. That same year he founded his own record label, Blues Boys Kingdom, with headquarters at Beale Street in Memphis. There, among other projects, he was a producer for artists such as Millard Lee and Levi Seabury. In 1962, King signed to ABC-Paramount Records, which was later absorbed into MCA Records. In November 1964, King recorded the Live at the Regal album at the Regal Theater. King later said that Regal Live "is considered by some the best recording I've ever had ... that particular day in Chicago everything came together."
From the late 1960s, his new manager, Sid Seidenberg, pushed him into a different type of venue as blues-rock performers like Eric Clapton and Paul Butterfield were bringing blues music to appreciative white audiences. King gained further visibility among rock audiences as an opening act on the Rolling Stones' 1969 American Tour. He won a Grammy Award in 1970 for his version of the song "The Thrill Is Gone" which was a hit on both the Pop and R&B charts. Rolling Stone magazine listed it in the number 183 spot in their 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
King was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1980, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987, and the National Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame in 2014. In 2004, he was awarded the international Polar Music Prize which is given to artists "in recognition of exceptional achievements in the creation and advancement of music."
From the 1980s to his death in 2015, he maintained a highly visible and active career, appearing on numerous television shows and sometimes performing 300 nights a year. In 1988, he reached a new generation of fans with the single "When Love Comes to Town", a collaborative effort with the Irish band U2 on their Rattle and Hum album. In December 1997, he performed in the Vatican's fifth annual Christmas concert and presented his trademark guitar "Lucille" to Pope John Paul II. In 1998, King appeared in The Blues Brothers 2000, playing the part of the lead singer of the Louisiana Gator Boys along with Eric Clapton, Dr. John, Koko Taylor and Bo Diddley. In 2000, he and Clapton teamed up again to record Riding With the King which won a Grammy Award for Best Traditional Blues Album.
Discussing where he took the Blues, from "dirt floor, smoke in the air" joints to grand concert halls, King said the Blues belonged everywhere beautiful music belonged. He successfully worked both sides of the commercial divide, with sophisticated recordings and "raw, raucous" live performances.
2006–2014
In 2006, King went on a farewell world tour although he remained active afterward. The tour was partly supported by Northern Irish guitarist, Gary Moore, with whom King had previously toured and recorded. It started in the United Kingdom and continued with performances at the Montreux Jazz Festival and in Zürich at the Blues at Sunset. During his show in Montreux at the Stravinski Hall, he jammed with Joe Sample, Randy Crawford, David Sanborn, Gladys Knight, Leela James, Andre Beeka, Earl Thomas, Stanley Clarke, John McLaughlin, Barbara Hendricks and George Duke.In June 2006, King was present at a memorial of his first radio broadcast at the Three Deuces Building in Greenwood, Mississippi where the Mississippi Blues Commission erected an official marker as part of the Mississippi Blues Trail. The same month, a groundbreaking was held for a new museum, dedicated to him, in Indianola, Mississippi. The B.B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center opened on September 13, 2008.
In late October 2006, King recorded a concert album and video entitled B.B. King: Live at his B.B. King Blues Clubs in Nashville and Memphis. The video of the four night production featured his regular band and captured his shows as he performed them nightly around the world. Released in 2008, they were his first performances in over a decade to be documented with a live album release.
In 2007, King played at Eric Clapton's second Crossroads Guitar Festival and contributed the songs "Goin' Home", to Goin' Home: A Tribute to Fats Domino and "One Shoe Blues" to Sandra Boynton's children's album Blue Moo, accompanied by a pair of sock puppets in a music video for the song.
In the summer of 2008, King played at the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival in Manchester, Tennessee where he was given a key to the city. Later that year, he was inducted into the Hollywood Bowl Hall of Fame.
File:Barack Obama singing in the East Room.jpg|left|thumb|upright=.8|President Obama and King singing "Sweet Home Chicago" on February 21, 2012
He performed at the Mawazine festival in Rabat, Morocco on May 27, 2010. In June 2010, he played at the Crossroads Guitar Festival with Robert Cray, Jimmie Vaughan, and Eric Clapton. He also contributed to Cyndi Lauper's album Memphis Blues which was released on June 22, 2010.
In 2011, King played at the Glastonbury Music Festival, and in the Royal Albert Hall in London where he recorded a concert video.
Rolling Stone ranked him at No. 6 on its 2011 list of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time.
On February 21, 2012, King was among the performers of "In Performance at the White House: Red, White and Blues" during which President Barack Obama sang part of "Sweet Home Chicago". King recorded for the debut album of rapper and producer Big K.R.I.T. who also hails from Mississippi. On July 5, 2012, King performed a concert at the Byblos International Festival in Lebanon.
On May 26, 2013, he appeared at the New Orleans Jazz Festival.
On October 3, 2014, after completing his live performance at the House of Blues in Chicago, a doctor diagnosed King with dehydration and exhaustion and the eight remaining shows of his ongoing tour had to be canceled. King did not reschedule the shows, and the House of Blues show would be the last before he died in 2015.