B.B. King

Regarded across the globe as the preeminent blues figure, the iconic B.B. King ranked as the paramount electric guitarist throughout the latter half of the twentieth century. His signature bent notes and rapid-fire picking approach shaped countless modern blues performers, while his raw yet assured vocals—adept at extracting every shade of meaning from lyrics—matched the intensity of his playing. From 1951 through 1985 he placed a striking 74 singles on Billboard’s R&B lists and became one of the rare pure blues performers to achieve broad pop success when his 1970 blockbuster “The Thrill Is Gone” reached mainstream audiences, prompting memorable turns on The Ed Sullivan Show and American Bandstand. In later years he collaborated with artists such as Eric Clapton and U2 while sustaining a celebrated solo trajectory, all without ever abandoning his instantly identifiable electric-guitar sound.

Riley B. King’s lifelong gifts first took root in the blues-saturated Mississippi Delta, where his birth occurred in 1925 near the hamlet of Itta Bena. Relocated repeatedly between his mother’s household and his grandmother’s home during childhood, he grew up largely without his father, who departed when King was still very young. The boy toiled long hours as a sharecropper and fervently performed sacred songs in church before relocating in 1943 to Indianola, another Delta community.

Country and gospel sounds left a permanent imprint on King’s developing musical outlook, as did the approaches of blues masters T-Bone Walker and Lonnie Johnson together with jazz innovators Charlie Christian and Django Reinhardt. He journeyed to Memphis in 1946 to seek out his cousin, the hard-edged country-blues guitarist Bukka White. Over ten formative months White instructed his eager relative in the subtleties of blues guitar. After a brief return to Indianola and the unrelenting demands of sharecropping alongside his wife Martha, King settled back in Memphis by the close of 1948 and remained there for an extended period.

He soon began airing his performances on Memphis radio station WDIA, which had only lately adopted an innovative all-Black format. Club proprietors favored acts that also held radio slots, allowing them to promote nightly engagements over the airwaves. Upon the departure of WDIA disc jockey Maurice “Hot Rod” Hulbert, King assumed his platter-spinning duties. Initially introduced as “The Peptikon Boy” after a potent tonic that competed with Hadacol, his broadcast name evolved into “The Beale Street Blues Boy,” later abbreviated to Blues Boy and ultimately the crisp B.B.

The year 1949 marked a four-star breakthrough. King recorded his initial four sides for Jim Bulleit’s Bullet Records, among them a track titled “Miss Martha King” honoring his spouse, then secured a pact with the Bihari Brothers’ Los Angeles-based RPM Records. Over the ensuing couple of years he cut numerous sides in Memphis for RPM, many supervised by the then-emerging Sam Phillips, whose own Sun Records label remained a future prospect. Phillips simultaneously produced material for the Biharis and Chess, his roster also encompassing Howlin’ Wolf, Rosco Gordon, and fellow WDIA personality Rufus Thomas.

The Biharis themselves captured additional early King performances by assembling portable gear in any viable space. His first national R&B chart-topper, the 1951 rendition of “Three O’Clock Blues” (originally recorded by Lowell Fulson), was tracked inside a Memphis YMCA. Among King’s Memphis associates were vocalist Bobby Bland, drummer Earl Forest, and ballad specialist pianist Johnny Ace. When King took to the road to promote “Three O’Clock Blues,” he entrusted the ensemble known as the Beale Streeters to Ace.

It was in this period that King bestowed the name Lucille upon his cherished guitar. During an engagement in the small Arkansas settlement of Twist, a quarrel erupted between two rivals over a woman; the scuffle overturned a kerosene-filled container used for heating, igniting the venue. Amid the rush to flee the blaze, King momentarily abandoned his instrument inside, then dashed back through the flames to retrieve it at grave personal risk. Once the smoke cleared he discovered that the woman at the center of the altercation bore the name Lucille. Numerous subsequent guitars have carried that name, and Gibson eventually issued a B.B.-endorsed model under the same designation.

Throughout the 1950s King solidified his status as a consistently potent R&B hitmaker. Cutting primarily in Los Angeles—by 1953 the WDIA broadcast shift had become untenable amid nonstop touring—for RPM and its successor Kent, he amassed twenty chart entries during that turbulent decade, among them “You Know I Love You” (1952); “Woke Up This Morning” and “Please Love Me” (1953); “When My Heart Beats like a Hammer,” “Whole Lotta’ Love,” and “You Upset Me Baby” (1954); “Every Day I Have the Blues” (another Fulson adaptation), the languid blues ballad “Sneakin’ Around,” and “Ten Long Years” (1955); “Bad Luck,” “Sweet Little Angel,” and the Platters-styled “On My Word of Honor” (1956); and “Please Accept My Love” (first waxed by Jimmy Wilson) in 1958. His guitar work grew sharper and more assertive as the decade advanced, shaping a generation of rising guitarists nationwide.

King’s impassioned two-sided revival of Joe Turner’s “Sweet Sixteen” became another major seller in 1960, followed closely by “Got a Right to Love My Baby” and “Partin’ Time.” Yet Kent could not retain an artist of his stature indefinitely, and he may have grown weary of seeing fresh albums relegated to the ninety-nine-cent bins on the Biharis’ budget Crown imprint. He shifted to ABC-Paramount Records in 1962, mirroring the path taken by Lloyd Price, Ray Charles, and soon afterward Fats Domino.

At the fabled Chicago venue in November 1964 he captured the landmark Live at the Regal album, its grooves radiating palpable energy. That same year he scored a modest hit with “How Blue Can You Get,” destined to become one of his signature pieces. “Don’t Answer the Door” in 1966 and “Paying the Cost to Be the Boss” two years later both reached the R&B Top Ten, while the socially conscious, funk-inflected “Why I Sing the Blues” narrowly missed that mark in 1969.

Widespread acclaim arrived in 1969 when King’s stately, violin-laden minor-key interpretation of Roy Hawkins’ “The Thrill Is Gone” propelled him into mainstream awareness, diverging markedly from the compact horn-driven arrangements he had previously favored. Popular listeners finally embraced him: the track not only topped the R&B charts at number three but also climbed high on the pop lists.

King remained among the scant blues artists who sustained consistent success into the 1970s, largely because he embraced stylistic experimentation. In 1973 he traveled to Philadelphia to cut the major hits “To Know You Is to Love You” and “I Like to Live the Love” with the polished rhythm section behind the Spinners and the O’Jays. He reunited with longtime associate Bland in 1976 for a series of well-received duets. Two years later he joined the jazz-oriented Crusaders for the infectiously funky “Never Make Your Move Too Soon” and the uplifting “When It All Comes Down.” Some ventures proved less successful; the album Love Me Tender, an attempt to adopt the Nashville country style, proved an artistic misstep.

Although his live performances remained reliably rewarding and he maintained a grueling schedule averaging three hundred dates annually, King moderated his studio output somewhat. Even so, the 1993 MCA release Blues Summit marked a strong return, pairing him with peers John Lee Hooker, Etta James, Fulson, and Koko Taylor on a set of classics. Further highlights from the era encompass 1999’s Let the Good Times Roll: The Music of Louis Jordan and 2000’s Riding with the King, a collaboration with Eric Clapton. For his eightieth birthday in 2005 King issued the star-laden album 80, featuring appearances by Gloria Estefan, John Mayer, and Van Morrison. Live appeared in 2008; that same year he delivered the engaging One Kind Favor, a return to unadorned blues that discarded the polished production of his recent work. A comprehensive box set spanning more than six decades of touring, recording, and performing, Ladies and Gentlemen...Mr. B.B. King, surfaced in 2012. Late in 2014 King canceled several engagements owing to fatigue; he was hospitalized twice and entered hospice care the following spring. He passed away in Las Vegas, Nevada, on May 14, 2015.