Happy Birthday, B.B. King

TWIT would like to wish B.B. King a very happy birthday.The blues guitar legend is 80 years young.  His reign as the undisputed king of blues is longer than any monarch, and he continues to wear his crown well today.  Despite diabetes and his age, B.B.still tours and performs, and is still cranking out the albums.  

For more than half a century, Riley B. King - better known as B.B. King - has defined the blues for a worldwide audience. Since he started recording in the 1940s, he has released over fifty albums. He was born September 16, 1925, on a plantation in Itta Bena, Mississippi, near Indianola. In his youth, he played on street corners for dimes, and would sometimes play in as many as four towns a night. In 1947, he hitchhiked to Memphis, TN, to pursue his music career. Memphis was where every important musician of the South gravitated, and which supported a large musical community where every style of African American music could be found. B.B. stayed with his cousin Bukka White, one of the most celebrated 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 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," became so popular, it was expanded 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.

In the mid-1950s, 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 to remind him never to do a crazy thing like fight over a woman. Ever since, each one of B.B.'s trademark Gibson guitars has been called Lucille.

I had the pleasure of seeing B.B. Kingperform last year when he appeared in Louisvlle. He blew me away.  He didn't prance around the stage, thrashing about like most guitarists do; he sat on a chair center-stage and performed.  But he still blew me away.  When he performed "The Thrill Is Gone" you actually could feel that the thrill was in deed gone.  I remember the first One-Touch commercial he did - he would put his hand over his heart and say "You want to feel the blues here."  You can definitely feel it when B.B. plays.

I'll be visiting B.B.'s club next week when we're down in Memphis.  I already read that he will be performing in Nashvill next week while we'll be in Memphis, so I'm almost positive he won't be at his club, but you never know.  In the meanwhile, just write me in care of the blues.