BLUES MUSIC

MAGAZINE

B.B.
King

A Life
& Legacy
1925 - 2015
 A Tribute
To
B.B. King
September 16, 1925 - May 14, 2015

We hope you enjoy this special digital-only tribute to the legacy of B.B. King.
Blues Music Magazine decided to create this special digital-only issue devoted solely to
honoring B.B. King’s life and music. B.B. had an enormous impact on American music
for over 60 years, and this was going to be a special digital issue for our paid
subscribers only. As the tribute took shape we realized, it needed to be shared with the
world and it needed to be free. We hope you share it with your friends across the globe.
For our regular subscribers, this is not Issue #7, you will receive #7 early in the
summer. It will feature an in-depth talk with Joe Bonamassa about his summer Three
Kings Tour, biographical pieces on the three Kings (B.B., Albert, and Freddie), profiles
on Ana Popovic, Sugaray Rayford, Dave Specter, over 50 CD reviews, and much more.
For non-subscribers, we ask that you put on your favorite B.B. King record, read
the wonderful testimonials from his friends, enjoy the timeless pictures, revisit some of
our favorite reviews of B.B.’s recent music, and consider subscribing to
Blues Music Magazine. In today’s digital world, print magazines like
Blues Music Magazine must rely on individual subscriptions to continue in print. Your
subscription or donation is a vote of confidence to keep the magazine sharing the blues.
This issue is available for print on demand for all our collector fans at MagCloud.com

Art Tipaldi
Editor In Chief
2 Blues Music Magazine
PHOTOGRAPHY © MARILYN STRINGER
FRONT COVER PHOTOGRAPHY (B.B. KING)
© PERTTI NURMI

PHOTOGRAPHY © MARILYN STRINGER

BACK COVER - B.B. KING & LITTLE MILTON
ART TIPALDI

INTRODUCTION
2 by Art Tipaldi
5 RIFF & GROOVES
From The Editor-In-Chief

6 B.B. KING BIOGRAPHY 10 B.B. KING’S BAND

by Art Tipaldi by Ron Levy & Michael
BLUESVILLE MUSICIANS & FRIENDS
12 by Bill Wax
14
by Various Artist & Friends

14 WRITERS REMEMBER 51 DOWN IN THE DELTA

by Various Writers by Roger Stolle

53 AROUND THE WORLD 55 REVIEWS

by Bob Margolin B.B. King CDs & DVDs

62 PHOTOGRAPHERS REMEMBER 70 ONE LAST NOTE

by Various Photographers by Jack Sullivan
4 Blues Music Magazine
 PUBLISHER: MojoWax Media Inc.
PRESIDENT: Jack Sullivan
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF: Art Tipaldi
LAYOUT: Jack Sullivan
CONTRIBUTING EDITORS
David Barrett / Michael Cote / Thomas J. Cullen III
Bill Dahl / Hal Horowitz / Tom Hyslop
Larry Nager / Bill Wasserzieher / Don Wilcock
~~~
COLUMNISTS
Bob Margolin / Roger Stolle
~~~
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS
Vincent Abbate / Grant Britt / Michael Cala
Mark Caron / Tom Clarke / Kay Cordtz
Ted Drozdowski / Robert Feuer / Rev. Keith Gordon Brian
D. Holland / Stacy Jeffress / Chris Kerslake Michael Kins-
man / Karen Nugent / Brian M. Owens
Tim Parsons / Tony Del Ray / Phil Reser
Nick DeRiso / Pete Sardon / Richard Skelly
Eric Thom / Mark Thompson
M.E. Travaglini / Bill Vitka
~~~
CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS
Scott Allen / Robert Barclay / Mark Goodman
Les Gruseck / Aigars Lapsa / Doug Richard
Joseph A. Rosen / Dusty Scott / Marilyn Stringer
Jen Taylor / Susan Thorsen
~~~
SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION
Web: www.bluesmusicmagazine.com
E-Mail: Jack@bluesmusicmag.com
~~~
EDITORIAL QUERIES
E-Mail: editor@bluesmusicmag.com
~~~
BUSINESS AND CIRCULATION QUESTIONS E-Mail:
jack@bluesmusicmag.com
~~~
MEDIA SUBMISSIONS
Mail 2 copies to: Blues Music Magazine
P.O. Box 1446, Bradenton, FL 34206
~~~
ADVERTISING
Web: www.bluesmusicmagazine.com
E-Mail: advertise@bluesmusicmag.com
~~~
Blues Music Magazine welcomes articles, photographs,
and any material about the blues suitable for publication.
Please direct queries to editor@bluesmusicmag.com. Blues
Music Magazine assumes no responsibility for unsolicited
manuscripts, photographs, or illustrations. Material may be
edited at the discretion of the editors.
To be credited and reimbursed,
all submissions must be properly marked with name,
address, telephone number, and e-mail of author/photogra-
pher/artist. Payment for unsolicited material is at the discre-
tion of the publisher. All material becomes the property of
Blues Music Magazine.
© 2015 MojoWax Media, Inc.
In 1999, B.B. King and his rhythm section
came to my high school and graciously did an hour
workshop with 100 of my students. These were
students involved in my Blues and Literature class
and our History of Popular Music class; they were
not necessarily musicians or band members.
B.B. was amazing. We all know you will
never meet a more gracious, humane person in
your life, but these 100 kids and about 50 adult
lives were forever changed by this 74-year-old
ambassador of good will. The students said the
moment he walked in the room, they felt a spiritual-
like aura and they were hooked by his demeanor.
More than anything, B.B. showed those
in attendance how to be human as he offered
essential lessons in how we should live with
each other. As he shook hands, B.B. told one
kid to practice the guitar, “So you can show me
something the next time I come here.” Though the
kid was a trombone player, he went out and bought
a guitar, figuring B.B. must have known something.
The kids wrote down whatever word or line he said
to them and quoted it in future journals or writings.
Many of my students have said they want to live a
life B.B. would be proud of. I’ve already seen those
changes happening.
When you think there’s nothing more he
can do, B.B. will surprise you and go beyond your
expectations. With only one pick to give away,
I pointed out an 18-year-old student in a wheel
chair. Not only did he give her the pick, he said he
would only sign autographs if he could sit next to
her. As he left, he kissed Amy. Her smile said it all.
After the 90 minutes with my students, an
hour’s drive to the night venue, and a 90-minute
evening show, he welcomed over 100 people into
his room back stage, signed and talked to each
for as long as was necessary. When he ended the
night, he told three of my students who made it to
the evening show, “Treat people with kindness,
and they will treat you the same way.”
“Let B.B.’s music keep our spirits high”
Art Tipaldi, Editor In Chief
Blues Music Magazine 5

Biography
This biography of B.B. King is interspersed
with quotes from the many interviews I’ve had with
B.B. over the past 20 years.
“The blues is the source. It has to do with people,
places, and things. It’s life, with all the emotion and
passions. As long as we have them, we’ll have
blues. The blues contains all the basic feelings
of human beings: pain, happiness, fear, courage,
confusion, and desire told in simple stories. That’s
the genius of the blues.” – B.B. King
Since the late 1940s, Riley B. King, better
known as B.B. King, has played his blues for
audiences around the world. He was born in 1925
in the Mississippi Delta, and has performed on
stages around the world for well over 20,000 one-
nighters with only “Lucille” as his defense.
From the start, B.B. King stood up to all
fears. He learned the blues in the cotton
6 Blues Music Magazine
PHOTOGRAPHY © ART TIPALDI
fields of Indianola, Mississippi, in the 1930s. It was
when he played in and around Indianola when King
decided on the blues. As a teen he was in a local
Gospel choir, and he was also influenced by the
guitar sounds of Blind Lemon Jefferson, Lonnie
Johnson, and T-Bone Walker. But the people of
Indianola helped King decide which path to follow.
“I would sit on the corners of my hometown
in Indianola playing the guitar with a hat for tips
at my feet. When they asked for a Gospel song,
they’d pat me on the head and tell me to keep it
up, that I’d be good someday. But they didn’t put
nothing in the hat. Others would come up and
ask me to do a blues song and always put a little
something in the hat. You can see what motivated
me to be a blues singer.”
He delved deeper into the blues when he
relocated on Beale Street, where Riley B. King
became “The Beale Street Blues Boy” before he
shortened it to just “Blues Boy.”
 When King arrived in Memphis in the late 1940s,
he took lessons from his cousin, Bukka White. It
was there that King’s signature vibrato was born
of frustration. King had trouble working Bukka’s
slide and developed his shaking vibrato as a way
to approximate White’s slide. Today, that signature
guitar vibrato is imitated over and over.
It was also in Memphis that King was hired
by WDIA’s Rufus Thomas to be a disc jockey on
that station. Each day, King played records, hyped
his own shows, and sold Peptikon, an alcohol filled
stomach-ache medicine, to listeners.
During these years, he was woodsheddin’
in the local jukes and clubs on both sides of the
Mississippi River. One night in Twist, Arkansas,
Lucille was born. King was playing at a juke where
they used a trashcan and kerosene to keep warm.
A fight broke out over a woman’s attention between
two male rivals. As they fought, they spilled the
can and the dry wooden walls and floor of the
juke was engulfed in flames. All escaped, but King
remembered that his black Gibson guitar was still
inside.
He ran in and saved the guitar. When he
found out that the name of the woman they fought
over was Lucille, he decided to name his guitar that
to remember.
Though King began recording in the early
1950s, it was after his number one hit in 1951,
“Three O’Clock Blues,” that King bought a bus for
his band and hit the road. In fact, he hit the road so
hard that he gave up his radio gig. “I can tell you
that in 1956, I did 342 one nighters. I never did that
again. We average more than 200 shows every
year.”
Throughout his career, King has released
over 80 albums and been featured on countless
DVDs, but it was the stately, mainstream treatment
of “The Thrill Is Gone” in 1969 that draped the
ambassador’s robe over King’s broad shoulders.
Since then, he carried blues music abroad. “When
I bring the blues to these places, I try to make
friends. One of the biggest commodities we export
is our music. I’m a part of that.
“Playing ‘The Thrill Is Gone’ is my favorite
part of my show. That’s always been my biggie
because it’s been played more than any other one
of mine. People remember the intro so when I start
it, people immediately recognize it.”
As the blues ambassador, King readily
accepted those responsibilities and continued to do
humble duties for people.
“I’m a simple man. I think it’s important to stay
close to the people. I’ve got a policy I’ve honored;
I’ll sign autographs for any fan. Since the people
have been so nice to me through the years, I try
and always remember to be at my best behavior
when I play. That might be the night that you come
with your wife and family to see me for the first
time, and I want everything to be good. I try and do
that all over the world. I want friends and families
to get along. I want this to become a world where
we can talk to people and make compromises and
don’t have to call people names on the streets or
go to war.”
Sadly, there were darker lessons King
assimilated. For example, every early B.B. King
song is co-written by Jules Taub or Joe Josea
and neither is ever mentioned by King. King
explained, “Nobody knows who he was. I definitely
don’t. That’s the company getting a share of my
royalties. That was their way of claiming half of the
song. I didn’t think about it at the time. I don’t hold
that against them. That was a part of my learning.”
King also dealt with the dark side of
promoters in the chitlin’ circuit. “The chitlin’ circuit
was a series of small clubs that I played until I
was in my 30’s. It was a place you could get 150
people crowded in. Some guys would be shooting
craps, and I played for the ones who weren’t
gambling. I’d get $15 when I finished, if I could find
the promoter. That was a good way to get training.
We had to try and make each night an audition.
Whether we worked tomorrow depended on how
well we did tonight.”
King was quick to point out how he
survived discrimination throughout the Jim Crow
South. “There were so many times where there
were things you would like to do, you could not
because of the segregation. I fought back in
my own way. If I went to a gas station and they
wouldn’t let me use the restroom, I wouldn’t fill
up my bus. I did that for a long time. We let it be
known we didn’t like what was going on.”
Yet, bitterness was never a crown this
King wore. Instead, the Blues Boy embarked
upon a life on the road that would broadcast his
vibrations around the world. “I’ve been movin’ on
all my life.” His over 60 on the road testified his
Ambassador of the Blues title. No performer has
shouldered this responsibility with more dignity
than B.B. King. years on the road testified to his
Ambassador of the Blues title. No performer has
shouldered this responsibility with more dignity
than B.B. King.
Blues Music Magazine 7
 In a Rolling Stone poll of 100 Greatest
Guitarists, King was named the Number 3. His
run of 15 Grammys began in 1971 with Best R&B
Vocal Performance for “The Thrill Is Gone.” He’s
won six Grammys for Traditional Blues Albums
Live At The Apollo, Blues Summit, Blues On The
Bayou, Ridin’ With King, his 2001 collaboration
with Eric Clapton, 80, A Christmas Celebration
Of Hope, and One Kind Favor. In 1987, King was
honored with a Grammy Lifetime Achievement
Award.
For all the years he has devoted to this
blues calling, King has received five honorary
degrees, three NAACP Image Awards, six Lifetime
Achievement Awards, the B’nai B’rith Humanitarian song for him, Bono wrote “When Love Comes
Award, the 1990 Presidential Medal of the Arts,
the 1995 Kennedy Center Honor, and dozens
of DownBeat Critic and Readers’ poll awards.
Most recently, in
2014, King was PHOTOGRAPHY © JOSEPH A. ROSEN
inducted in the
DownBeat Hall of
Fame.
In 1987,
he was inducted
in the Rock
and Roll Hall of
Fame. In 2006,
he was awarded
the Presidential
Medal of
Freedom, and
in 2012, King
anchored a night
of blues at the
White House that
was broadcast on
PBS.
In 1980, King was inducted into the Blues
Foundation’s Hall of Fame, and in 1997, King
was presented the Blues Foundation’s Lifetime
Achievement Award in Los Angeles. King has
amassed 39 Blues Music Award nominations and
won 15 Awards. After wining the Blues Music
Award for Entertainer of the Year for 11 years in
a row, from 1995 to 2005, the Blues Foundation
renamed it the B.B. King Entertainer of the Year in
2006.
There are three biographies of King, The
Arrival Of B.B. King by Charles Sawyer in 1980,
Blues All Around Me by B.B. King and David Ritz
from 1996, and B.B. King Treasures by B.B. King
and Dick Waterman complied in 2005.
8 Blues Music Magazine
In 1991, B.B. King’s Blues Club opened on Beale
Street in Memphis. In 1994, a second club opened
at Universal CityWalk in Los Angeles. A third club
was opened in New York City’s Times Square
in June 2000. Since then, others have opened
in Nashville, Las Vegas, and Orlando. In 2008,
Sirius/XM renamed its blues channel B.B. King’s
Bluesville, which featured intimate stories told
by King. King has been in numerous movies and
TV shows. He is also prominent in Eric Clapton’s
three Crossroads Guitar Festival DVDs playing
with Robert Cray, Jimmie Vaughan, Hbert Sumlin,
Clapton, Buddy guy and others.
When King asked U2’s Bono to write a
To Town” specifically for King in 1989 and then
recorded it with King at Sun Studios. In 2004, King
received Sweden’s Polar Music Prize from the King
and Queen of
Sweden. When
you travel
to Lucerne,
Switzerland,
and stay at
the Hotel
Schweizerhof,
request room
146, the B.B.
King room.
In 2008,
the B.B. King
Museum
and Delta
Interpretive
Center opened
in Indianola,
Mississippi,
giving King a permanent presence in his Delta
hometown. Most recently in 2014, MVDvisual
released the docu-biography, B.B. King The Life Of
Riley, a two-hour DVD that features King and many
others telling King’s life through stories and musical
performances.
In one of our last talks before we finished,
B.B. King told me one more blues nugget. “Some
will say to you anybody can play the blues, but
that doesn’t mean everybody’ll like it. You have to
express your self when you play the blues. It’s a
very simple music, but I think that simplicity makes
we that play the blues work harder at it.”
Play on Mr. King, may your vibrato
continue to spread the message throughout the
ages.
– Art Tipaldi
PHOTOGRAPHY © COURTESY OF BONNIE RAITT

“Without a doubt, B.B. King has influenced more rock and

blues musicians than anyone else in history. There is simply
no one else with more raw passion or eloquence. He’s also the
kindest and most generous person to other musicians I know.
There are reasons why he’s been loved and revered for so long –
it’s the dignity and heart he brings to his life as well as his music,
and the fact that he’s always true to why we loved him in the first
place.”
— Bonnie Raitt
Blues Music Magazine 9
 B.B. still working despite his advanced age and
I was privileged to have the unique and
declining health?” The answer is simple. Mr. King
special honor of working for eight years with one of
has always felt an unwavering responsibility for
the greatest American artists of all time, B.B. King.
“his” people, the musicians whose livelihoods and
A great man known and loved around the world
families depended on him. He also felt a great
for his grace, soulful musical genius, and genuine
responsibility and love towards his unwavering
humility. Mr. King is not just ‘King of the Blues,’
fans. I never saw him leave a venue until he had
but a beloved man whose personal qualities
signed autographs, posed for photos, and spoke
and examples of leadership earned the love and
or listened to every single fan that came to him.
respect of every one of us that worked for and
He was always a true gentleman. So many times
knew him.
over the years he would remember the names of
B.B. often called me his “son” on and
these fans, and their children and relatives. Some
off stage and treated me like one he truly loved.
of whom he might not have seen in decades. He
The feeling was mutual and always will be. As a
loved all people with a
personal and musical
king sized heart and was
role model, I never saw
giving of himself to a fault,

PHOTOGRAPHY © RON LEVY

him fail to take the high
pained if he felt he ever
road, or give less than
let anyone down.
100% of himself. 
B.B. has given
I described and
me many fond memories.
detailed many specific
I still cherish his hearty
examples of this in my
laugh and broad smile
book, Tales Of A Road
when remembering his
Dog (published by
response to one of my
Levtron.com) devoting
crazy stories or jokes,
five chapters to Mr.
youthful naiveté or
King and the B.B. King
something I played well
musical family I grew
he liked. Sometimes he’d
up with on the road
grimace when I played,
performing on every
said, or did something
continent short of
back-asswards too!
Antarctica. A family that
Yet he was just as gentle at those times; setting
B.B. nurtured and a family whose devotion and
me straight and making sure I got it. Combining
familial bonds are still strong today. Every musician
the patience of Job with the wisdom of Solomon
who played for Mr. King either before or since my
and his Delta country parables, he won my total
tenure (1969-76) shares this same fraternal kinship
respect and admiration. His wholehearted paternal
and always will, as well as our mutual friends.
pride inspired me to work harder to do my very
During my tenure with B.B., every night
best, just like him.
was a completely new show. We never knew what
I was only 16-years-old when I first met
he was going to play other then always starting
Mr. King in 1967 as a fan. Now in my sixties and
with “Everyday I Have The blues” in Bb, then into
23 years older than B.B. was when we first met, I
“How Blue Can You Get” in D-natural. He never
know it still amuses him to regard me as a grown
named the keys and rarely counted off a tempo,
man. During our reunion after a concert last year,
unless it was for the benefit of showmanship to
we were able to share things with each other man
include the audience. We did a good 300 shows
to man, that grew quite personal and emotional.
a year and B.B. always maintained the highest
Unspoken, we both realized this could be our
standards of excellence and we were expected to
very last time together. He graciously asked me
outperform anyone we shared the stage with, no
to play on his next album even though we both
matter who they were or what they did. And we
knew it would never be. Eventually he tired and we
usually did. It was a source of pride he instilled in
bade each other our fond farewells, and hugged
all of us, all the time. He played and led us with so
goodbye. We had reached deeply inside each
much heart and passion every night, you had to
other’s hearts and souls once again. And, it was
keep up.
very good and complete.
Lately, many have wondered, “Why is
– Ron Levy
10 Blues Music Magazine
 I could write several volumes of books
about my experiences while playing bass from
1985 to 2002 for Mr. King, but the most important
fact for me about working for B.B. is that he had
health insurance for his band. That is unheard of
in the music business. I became ill in 2002 and
had to come off the road. Having health insurance
provided by B.B. King’s company, King Road
Shows Inc. probably saved my life and kept me
from becoming bankrupt with medical bills. Mr.
King also kept me on retainer while I recovered.
He even helped me with my college tuition when I
went back to school at Tennessee State University
2005. TSU is where I met B. B. King’s nephew,
Walter King, in 1978. Walter referred me to B.B. in
1985 when I first joined the band.
One bit of advice that B.B. taught me
was to be true to yourself. I would be intimidated
by other great musicians we would be on the bill
with, and B.B. would say, “Don’t let those other
musicians intimidate you. We do what we do. All
we can be is ourselves.” I miss him dearly.
– Michael “Mighty Mike” Doster

B.B. King’s name is synonymous with

the word blues. It was not merely his enormous
talent that made him King of the Blues; it was
his unending drive for self-improvement, his
professional demeanor, and his ability to serve
as the worldwide ambassador for the blues. He
was appreciated beyond the blues community and
was equally loved and respected by both fans and
peers. These are just a few of the reasons B.B.
King was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in
the 1980 inaugural class and has a Blues Music
Award category named after him – the B.B. King
Entertainer Award.
– Jay Sieleman, President and CEO, The Blues
Foundation

Blues Music Magazine 11

 B.B. King loved the sound of a slide guitar, Over the next 12 years he remained gracious to
but could never figure out how to play it. Instead, everyone around him.
he learned to bend the string and found his As program director for Sirius/XM B.B.
signature sound. Oh, what a sound. King’s Bluesville, we produced 40 one hour
The first time I met B.B. was at the third shows together as well as three specials. I was
anniversary celebration of his blues club opening in lucky enough to spend many hours with him over
New York City. After the performance I introduced those years, much of it sitting at his dining room
myself to his manager, Floyd. He asked if I could table recording conversations which became the
wait around until after the show because Floyd program “You and Me with B. B. King.”
thought B.B. would want to say hello. Each program of “You and Me” had eight
I was escorted to the green room where to ten songs.  B.B. would talk about the artists
a line of people were waiting to meet him. I was even though we did not play the music while
brought to the center of the room and introduced recording the interviews. But he knew every song.
as “that guy” who does the satellite blues radio And I can’t recall him ever saying anything nasty
show. Before I could say anything, B.B. got up from about someone. He was not that guy. If he felt
his chair, came over to me, and said, “I’ve been like someone was wrong or had disappointed
wanting to meet you.” Gob smacked, I said, “Mr. him, he would just get a sly smile on his face and
King, this is all wrong. I’m supposed to say that to let me draw my own conclusions. He answered
you.” He laughed and it was the beginning of a true any question I put to him and was willing to do
friendship between us. so with honesty. His acceptance and the respect
I soon realized B.B. felt that he owed he showed became a lesson I will forever take
everyone else the thanks for their support and to heart. For me, if B.B. said you were “OK,” you
love, not himself. were golden.
Interestingly, B.B. was constantly looking
for the next new bit of
technology. He had
satellite radio before
almost anyone else knew
what it was. He had an
internet connection on
his bus before most of
us were connected at
home. B. B. was always
inquisitive about the latest
trends and refused to be
stuck in the past.
I consider the show I did
with B. the highlight of a
33- year radio career. He
showed us all how to carry
ourselves with dignity and
respect. Yes his guitar
playing influenced every
player who came after
him. He was also a great
vocalist, but more than that
he was a remarkable man.
As long as we remember
him, he will never be gone.
– Bill Wax

PHOTOGRAPHY © DUSTY SCOTT - COURTESY - BILL WAX

12 Blues Music Magazine
Blues Music Magazine 13
 I had the privilege of seeing B.B. King
perform several times and the thrill of meeting him
once. Never was a legend more gentle, elegant,
kind, and humble. In spite of his stature he didn’t
draw sharp lines between music, culture, or race
the way less evolved folks do, and yes even some
the blues world. And like many of us, cowboys
were his childhood heroes. He once said in an
interview: “This is going to probably sound funny
to you, but I didn’t think I was any different from
anyone else, other than I was a black kid instead of
being a white kid, and it was a segregated society.
We walked to school. The white kids had a school
bus. And, I was crazy about Roy Rogers. I liked
William Elliott. We called him Wild Bill, never did
think of them as being white. They were cowboys,
my heroes.” To me, besides his unparalleled
musicality, that speaks volumes to the inspiration
and greatness of B.B. King.
– Gary Allegretto
I discovered him way back through Crown
Records. The first time I met B.B. King, we were
playing at the old Fillmore West in San Francisco
in the middle 1960s. I was in the Butterfield Blues
Band. B.B. invited me to come to his hotel. I went
to the Fairmount the next day. He was in his
dressing gown and he had sheet music spread
all over his bed and he was practicing his ass off
doing scales and arpeggios. I thought to myself
that here’s a guy who’s on top of the world,
the greatest guitar player there is and he’s still
practicing and tryin’ to improve. I thought, there
must be some kind of lesson in this. He asked if I
was hungry, calls over to Oakland and orders dry
fried ribs. All he had to say was, “This is B.B. King
and I’m at the Fairmount Hotel. Send me over two
orders of dry fried ribs.” Within half an hour, they
were there. That’s a power right there.
14 Blues Music Magazine
The next time I saw him was I New York.
We were playin’ the Fillmore East and he invited
me to his house. He lived in New York before
he moved to Las Vegas. The apartment was in
Uptown Manhattan, a really nice neighborhood.
There was practically no furniture in it, but one
whole wall was full of LPs and tapes. All he ever
really cared about was music.
One time B.B. was gonna play on a Roy
Milton song, “Keep A Dollar In Your Pocket,” on
one of my albums. I had the track with me and I
was going to Las Vegas to have B.B. play on it. I
make jam and hot sauces from what I raise in my
garden and B.B. likes them. I’d ask him which he
wanted, jam or hot sauce, and he’d say both. I got
the jam for him in my bag and I’m going through
security. The older guard told me that I couldn’t
take it through. I thought there might be a chance
to cop a plea using B.B.’s name. I told him it was
for B.B. King in Las Vegas. He thought it over for a
moment, looked at me and said, “You tell B.B. the
thrill is gone and so is his jam!” you know how they
usually throw these in a wastebasket? This guy
stuck it under his chair.
When I got there, it was me and B.B. and
his longtime valet, Norman. It was the first time I’d
seen Norman unwind. We all sat and talked for two
hours before we hit a note. I asked B.B. if he ever
knew Roy Milton and he said they played together
on the ball field in Memphis before the Negro
league baseball game. We’d be out there playin’
and Satchel Paige would be there to pitch.
– Elvin Bishop
PHOTOGRAPHY © ARNIE GOODMAN
 The first time I saw B.B. King perform B.B. King certainly didn’t have to do that, but it
was at the 1969 Ann Arbor Blues Festival. He was made for one of the most unforgettable evenings
explosive, exciting, and the very picture of dignity. in that bass player’s life. It also made a lifelong fan
A few months later, he opened a show for the out of me.
Rolling Stones in Fort Collins, Colorado, and while B.B. King was so much more than a great
the situation was wildly different, he was once musician, though he was most certainly that. He
again exciting and dignified. My friends and I had was a deeply soulful and generous man who lived
worn the grooves off our copies of B.B. King, Live to inspire everyone with whom he came in contact.
At The Regal, and his live shows delivered every We will not see another like him in this life.
ounce of the promise implied on that amazing – Spencer Bohren
record.
Fast forward 15 years or so to the
legendary La Cigale Theatre in Paris,
PHOTOGRAPHY © BOB SEKINGER
France. B.B. King was the headliner, and I
was the support act along with a trio. We had
been in France for a month, and my bass
player was quite unhappy when our tour
manager informed us we would be playing
an extra show and he had changed all our
tickets accordingly. When we arrived at the
venue with my grumpy bass player, I had an
interview with a journalist, so my band went
backstage to the dressing rooms. By the
time I was finished with the interview, B.B.’s
dressing room door was closed, but my bass
player was beaming and going on and on
about what a wonderful man B.B. King was,
and how he had talked with him and my
drummer as if they were all old buddies and
on and on. He was transformed, and he was
happy.
After our opening set, B.B. went
on stage with his killer band and told the
audience how much he’d enjoyed our music,
and we got another round of enthusiastic
applause. Then B.B. leaned into the
microphone and said something like, “Do
you want to know a secret?”
Of course, the audience howled,
“Oui, oui,” in response. B.B. once again
leaned into the microphone and stage
whispered that it was my bass player’s
birthday. Again, the audience went crazy
while B.B. led them in a weird French
version of Happy Birthday.

Blues Music Magazine 15


B.B. King and my father Lonnie Brooks
have been friends for nearly 60 years. I’ve been
very fortunate to get to know B.B. like a family
member because of their friendship. Whenever
I had the opportunity to open a show for B.B. or
just to go see him perform, he would always call
me out to the stage and introduce me to the crowd
saying, “I feel like I’ve helped raised this young
man.”
When it came to being a professional
musician, outside of my father, he was one of the
best examples. I’ve studied B.B. on and off the
stage throughout my blues career. B.B. created
his own style of playing the guitar by bending (or
squeezing) the strings.
16 Blues Music Magazine
I was told by many of my elders that no one
was playing the guitar like that before B.B.
King. He has dedicated his life to playing the
blues and I know for a fact that he feels joy
from making people happy by playing the
blues.
B.B. built a solid bridge from Muddy
Waters and the Delta Blues musicians, then
laid a new foundation that enable us to take
the blues to the moon and beyond. His music
has touched many people all over the world.
I can talk forever about that, in addition to
being just as great of a man.
In the summer of 1993, I had the pleasure
to do a tour of 52 cities with B.B. King, Eric
Johnson, Buddy Guy, Koko Taylor, Junior
Wells, and my dad Lonnie Brooks. This was
the best tour I’ve been a part of in my life! We
were playing a lot of bigger outdoor venues
that were sold out with blues fans.
I watched B.B. every night from the side
of the stage. One night in Miami, as he was
walking off the stage after his set, he saw me
and pulled me to the side and said, “I see
you’ve been watching me every night son,
I wish I had something like this when I was
your age. Your daddy is just as good as I am,
we just have different styles, you take what
you can from all of us and make it yours.”
That made me feel so good because he
knew how I felt about my dad, but he also
seen how much I was admiring him. I’ve watched
him handle many other situations with class and
professionalism. He always treats everyone with
respect and remains humble.
He is a man who really cares about
all people. B.B. can make people from many
different backgrounds feel happy just by saying
and/or doing the right thing. He has a rare gift of
connecting with people from any race, sex, age, or
creed.
This is why he is and always will be the
King Of The Blues and also The King Of Charm!
– Ronnie Baker Brooks
 RIP Uncle B. My heart is extremely heavy. John Lee stood up and the crowd went
This is a huge loss for our community and for the berserk. I was right in the middle of two super
world. you can never be replaced. A true icon, a legends arguing about who was the greatest blues
true gentleman, a true scholar, a true King! man, but neither was arguing that they were the
I’ve always looked up to, respected, greatest. B.B. won that funny little argument. That
and admired B.B. King the man as if he was type of energy and level of respect that I felt back
the Pope. His influence on me as a person was then keeps me humbled for two lifetimes.”
extraordinarily similar to his influence on me as – Wayne Baker Brooks
a musician. He treated people with a very kind,
humbling, inviting, welcoming, and respectful spirit.
Just as if he treated the music he wanted to share
with you the same way with every note from his
convincing vocals to the singing of Lucille via his
fingers all coming from his soul and spirit.
I will never ever forget being on tour hitting
35 cities on the B.B. King Blues Festival in 1993
with my dad Lonnie Brooks, Buddy Guy, Koko
Taylor, Junior Wells, Eric Johnson, and of course
B.B. King. Every show I was on the side of the
stage watching the masters work, soaking it all up
and learning as much as I possibly could.
The last date of the tour was San
Francisco at the Concord Amphitheater where
John Lee Hooker stopped by the show to see
everyone’s set. This particular time I was on the
side of the stage all by myself watching Buddy,
then B.B. came and sat right next to me on my left
hand side. We were chatting a bit then Koko came
and sat next to B.B. on his left side, then moments
later John Lee came and sat right next to me on
my right hand side. For that moment I was like
“whoa.”
Buddy was ripping it up, working the crowd
PHOTOGRAPHY © MARILYN STRINGER

into a frenzy as usual. Then he brought it down

and said, “Whoa, whoa, hold it, I can’t go no further
without giving it up to the greatest blues man alive,
Mr. John Lee Hooker. The crowd was screaming
so loud that John Lee didn’t hear him say his
name. So John Lee turned and reached over me
in the middle of both super legends to tap B.B. and
said, “Hey B., stand up, he’s talking ‘bout you.”
B.B. says, “No man, he’s talking about
you.” John Lee says, “No, no, he’s talking bout
you.” Then B.B. said, “John Lee Hooker, the
greatest blues man in the world, he is definitely
talking bout you so stand up man.”
Blues Music Magazine 17
 I met B.B. in 1965 at the Apollo Theatre
in Harlem, New York City. He was very generous
in his accepting of me, as a young Brit singing the
blues, which meant a lot to me. B.B. King is one
of the all-time greatest blues players. He definitely
is one of the most important figures, in terms of
bringing the blues to a wider audience. The fact
that he’s kept going so long is a testament to his
strength. The last time I saw him play was just
a few years ago and he was still delivering the
goods.
– Eric Burdon
PHOTOGRAPHY © DAVID HORWITZ
B.B. was brought out on stage with some
assistance and sat down in a chair. It was magical.
As soon as he picked up his guitar, it was as if
someone had turned on the lights. His entire body
was aglow with a spirit that poured out through his
fingers. After his performance, I ran backstage to
shake his hand and to thank him for the years of
great music. I wanted to give him Eric’s newest
album, Soul Of A Man, which paid tribute to many
of the blues greats.
In the darkness of the backstage, I saw
him coming down in a wheelchair. He seemed
smaller and more
vulnerable than he had
appeared just moments
earlier. I approached him
with some hesitation and a
great deal of respect. I felt
that maybe I shouldn’t be
seeing him in this private
moment.
His entourage was very
protective of him, so I

stopped and put down my

head in embarrassment.
Turning my eyes up to look
at him, I could see that he
was welcoming me, not
even knowing who I was.
The bright aura that he
had had all around him on
stage was now visible only
within his eyes. I touched
his hand, which felt as
smooth as butter; it was
as if my hand disappeared
into his.
My own memory of B.B. is strong. I went to see I thanked him for the
him several years ago. I was always a great years of great music and handed him Eric’s CD,
admirer of the blues as a young person and, “For your listening pleasure.” He took it from me,
unfortunately not many of the originals were still smiling, and said, “Glad to see he’s still at it.” Then
around when I came of age to see concerts. So, I’ll he was pushed away in his wheelchair, straight
never forget my encounter with him, some years onto his tour bus and gone. A true gentleman, full
after Eric and I first saw him perform together. I of grace and humility.
went back on my own to see him again. – Marianna Burdon

18 Blues Music Magazine

 B.B. King has been
so special to me, I don’t

PHOTOGRAPHY © COURTESY OF JOHN HANH

even know how to describe
how much he meant. From
the time I was 17 years
old, right up until the last
time I saw him a year ago,
he selflessly gave me
wonderful career advice
that I’ll always remember.
He was generous with me
beyond words.
Most of all, I
just loved what a sweet,
humble man he was. Being
with him always made me
feel so good. I will always
love him. He was the King
of my Heart.
– Shemekia Copeland

I first met B.B. King the way most people

“B.B. paved the way for blues musicians
to tour the world by spreading his music, his good
will, his strength of character. We met when we
were teenagers in West Memphis, Arkansas, and I
am thankful for his life-long friendship. He’ll always
be precious to me in my heart and in my soul. My
love is with you B.”
– James Cotton
do, by listening to his records. I was 16 and found
an RPM label 78 of “Three O’Clock Blues” I had
played gigs opening for Floyd Dixon and Lowell
Fulson in L.A. and recognized the song as one of
Lowell’s.How had B.B. King slipped past my radar?
I knew blues pretty well for a kid, from the Texas-
style, Mississippi-style, Piedmont-style, the Chess
recordings out of Chicago and the Central Ave.
sound out of L.A., but B.B.’s style was unique. It
was a combination of so many guitar styles. From
T-Bone Walker and Muddy Waters to the more jazz
style of Oscar Moore or the jump style of Louis
Jordan. He had a less-is-more style that most
players don’t pursue or achieve until they’re much
older, with less to prove.
In 1989 I was 18 and my dad was inducted
into the Songwriters’ Hall Of Fame in New York. I
performed dad’s “Leroy Brown” for the induction (It
was one of the few songs my dad wrote that was
piano driven). When I finished my performance,
B.B. introduced himself, he said I had a great left
hand and asked if I’d be interested in going on tour
with him.
Blues Music Magazine 19
 I was very flattered for such high praise, I said
yes, but I never expect to ever hear from him.
Two or three weeks later I got a call that
he wanted me to meet the bus in Seattle. It was
my first tour. I had never played such big venues,
and I was playing solo. I was intimidated by the
audience, B.B. King, and his  band, but when I
finished the first song and felt the love from the
audience, all my fear disappeared. The next day I
got on the bus and B.B. invited me into his lounge
in the back and was truly complimentary and
encouraging.
B.B. gave me, and countless other young
musicians, the confidence, encouragement, and
opportunity that you need to make a living playing
music. I will forever be grateful to B.B. King for his
generous spirit and for giving me my first big break.
I don’t know of any artist who has
mentored more young players than B.B. King.
He single handedly inspired generations of great
players to carry on the musical tradition that was
passed down to him. As much as his music, the
love he shared will be his legacy.
– A.J. Croce
One of the greatest honors in my life is
B.B. King telling me that he and I are friends. He
told me this after I brought my son, then age eight,
to one of his shows. At that time I had done several
tours with Mr. King. I wasn’t playing on this show,
but I was back stage with my son when Mr. King
came out. He never gave me a look, he walked
straight down the long hall way directly to my son
and shook his hand while asking him what his
name was. So gracious, so kind, so personable.
My son was on cloud nine because Mr. King really
was a king in his eyes and especially his dad’s.
After he shook my son’s hand, he turned to
me and asked, “How are you Albert?”
I said, “I didn’t know if you would have
recognized me.”
20 Blues Music Magazine
He looked at me slightly confused and said we’re
friends Albert, of course I would! What a wonderful
experience to have my greatest idol say that to me.
I have so many memories about all the
shows I did with Mr. King. It was always such an
honor to sit with him back stage and to watch the
master perform. It was like class in session for me
every night. I will never forget how after the show
he would meet and greet each and every person
who came to see
him no matter how
late he had to stay.
The opening bands
would always have
to go last because
the people and his
fans came first.
I would
make sure that
at every show I
would get in the
waiting line and
personally thank
him for having us
open, and he would
always comment
on how I didn’t have to do that, but how much he
appreciated it. Just a complete gentleman.
Mr. King was and always will be my
greatest inspiration both musically and personally.
He came from the hardest life possible and made
not only his life better, but everyone’s life who was
ever lucky enough to have him in theirs. He was
the most humble gracious gentleman both on and
off the stage that I’ve ever met. The great band in
heaven just got the performer they’ve been waiting
for today. I will treasure my memories with and of
him for the rest of my life.
– Albert Cummings
 I feel so blessed to have had a chance to
spend time with the King of the Blues, B.B. King.
I’ve opened for him twice. The first time during his
set, he introduced me and wanted me to come
out on stage to say thank you to me. When I got
out there, I gave him a big red lipstick kiss on his
cheek. His eyes got big, he smiled at me and he
said, “You’re pretty. I’m 80 and not dead yet.” The
audience loved it!
The second time
was in Detroit at the
PHOTOGRAPHY © COURTESY - THORNETTA DAVIS
Fox Theater. He was
always generous to
his fans. At the end of
his performance, he
started throwing chain
pendants that marked
his 2012 world tour to
the audience. I was
standing backstage
and wanted one so bad
that I walked out on the
stage and startled B.B.
he looked at me holding
his chest. I apologized
and said, “I’m sorry
B.B. but I wanted one
of those pendants.” He said, “Here baby.” And
gave me the last one. I will always cherish this.
– Thornetta Davis
I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t in
love with B.B. King, nor can I remember a time
when he wasn’t a household name. This sure says
a lot for B.B.’s presence and contribution to blues
music, as very few blues artists have received
mainstream media attention or top 40 radio status.
As a budding blues guitar player, B.B. was
a major part of my blues education: sitting and
laboring over his records, trying to get his licks into
my fingers. There was so much sophistication in
his music. I personally found B.B. a tougher study
than some of the simpler blues players, but so
worth every note and nuance.
Of course I had seen B.B. many times in
concert, but as I began to tour with Albert Collins, I
began to find myself performing on the same bills
with B.B. King, along with the honor of meeting the
man. What a thrill for this young, white girl to meet
another one of her idols, the King of the Blues, and
now get to watch him from the wings of the stage. I
know that many folks will say the same words; that
B.B. King is a class act, because he is. He was
always so kind and gracious to myself and all who
meet him.
They say the mark of a great blues artist
is to be able to create their own unique sound
and style. Both vocally and on guitar, there is no
mistaking B.B. Thank you B.B. King for giving the
world so much beautiful, soulful music, for so many
years!
– Debbie Davies
Blues Music Magazine 21
 In 1997, B.B.’s luggage didn’t arrive with
him at Oslo Airport, so he had to go to the hotel
without his guitar and suits. Despite this, B.B.
agreed to use a guitar that we managed to provide
from a local music store. Just as he made himself
ready to go on-stage with just trousers and a shirt
“Lucille” arrived at the venue by express delivery
from the airport. This was two minutes before show
time and B.B. was of course very happy to be
reunited with his beloved instrument. Still his stage
clothes were missing, and he excused himself to
the audience for not wearing a jacket.
– Jostein Forsberg

“When I began the Talkin’ Blues project

in 2000, I made a wish list of musicians I wanted
to interview, and B.B. King was on top of that
list. I believed that no single interview was more
important than another and that if I couldn’t get an
interview with a specific artist, there was ‘always
someone else’. The one exception to this rule
was B.B. King. I mean, how could you claim to
document the blues without interviewing the King
of the Blues?
On January 31st, 2001, I sat in B.B.’s
bus at the Bell Centre in Montreal talking to him
about his life in the blues. I remember feeling
a little nervous when I boarded the bus, but he
greeted me with a kind “hello” that put me at
ease immediately. As soon as he spoke to me, I
remember thinking that he sounded just like he
did on the Johnny Carson Show. I was amazed
that I found myself sitting there talking to one of
the greatest blues musician that ever lived. I didn’t
know much about the blues back then but I clearly
understood what a special moment this was for
both my project and for me.
The 20-minute interview flew by and
before I knew it, it was time to go. While we packed
up the gear, I thanked him for the interview, and I
asked him to sign his autobiography and a copy of
22 Blues Music Magazine his Live At The Regal CD.
As he did so, he thanked me for doing this project
on the blues and for including him in it. At that point
in time, I found the idea of him thanking me for
what was, then, the greatest moment on my blues
journey to be somewhat unbelievable.
Fifteen years later, and a few more
encounters with Mr. King, I realize that no one else
on this planet has sacrificed more of themselves
for their art – given so much to their genre and
their fans – than what B.B. King has done for the
blues over all these years. And when he thanked
me that day for my attempt to document the blues,
I know he really meant it. I can’t thank him enough
for what he has brought to my life – in person and
through his music.
– Mako Funasaka, film maker, Talkin’ Blues
I first met B.B. King in the fall of 1988 back
stage at the Peabody hotel in Memphis at the
then called W.C. Handy Awards. I was overjoyed
and nervous to be honest but B.B. was so easy
going it was just like meeting my uncle or one of
the traveling preachers I had met at the holiness
church as a child. We were the first non-Memphis
band to win the blues competition and part of the
winnings were the B.B. King Lucille Award. I asked
him to check out my red Electra 335 copy and
he said, “You got the right one.” I only met him a
few times since then, but I’ve met and befriended
several of his children over the years. I thought
it only proper for me to write a song for him and
I put together “For You Mr. King.” Much love and
respect.
– Larry Garner
My Lifetime of Love for B.B. King
At the age of 16, my whole world was turned
upside down when my friend took me to see a B.B.
King show at the Fillmore West. B.B. was young,
strong, played loud, and had a ten-piece band
behind him; he left a powerful, chiselled indentation
on my psyche. From then on I was deeply
immersed in electric city blues. His blues changed
my life; it gave me focus, direction, and set my
path. I played ES-355’s, wore the suits, always had
horns in my bands, and essentially made B.B. –
the person and his guitar playing – the crux of my
life.
Early on, I realized that to really
understand the essence of blues playing and not
just be a clone, you need to go deeper into the
artists’ soul, personality, and idiosyncrasies. So I
dug into his inner feelings rather than simply the
notes he played. I attempted to understand his
mannerism rather than his riffs alone. Blues is
as much about phrasing and the space between
the notes as the actual notes they hit and that is
essentially the player’s own inner feel. So I always
met up with him when he had shows in Europe
and asked all the intense questions I could, which
he happily answered – including pressing on my
outstretched arm so that I could measure the finger
pressure he puts on the strings.
To best illustrate B’s personality, I
remember this encounter. The very first time
ever met him, I just wanted to tell him how much
influence he had had on my life. I said, “B.B., I just
love your music, and I play all your old stuff in my
set to this day.” Without missing a beat, he looks at
me and said, “Why? Don’t you like my new stuff?”
My heart sunk. Had I offended the King? But he
quickly gives me a big hearty laugh. Like his guitar
phrasing, a man of few words and sharp wit.
BB King’s Blues Is King 1967 LP is the one
that had changed my life and dominated my career
in music, and imposed the essential feeling and
ingredients for the real blues – let alone the guitar
licks and tone that the young B was dispensing in
1967. The album captures B.B.’s unique sound of
his Gibson ES-355.
Blues Music Magazine 23
You can hear his sustained notes and powerful
attack with a pure tone that people are paying
money to try and copy. B.B.’s guitar phrasing is
intelligent and goes beyond the standard blues
expression. It is all in his hands, heart, and soul.
Nobody can make five simple notes sing the way
B.B. King can. There is so much tension, attack,
and exploration in every song he played on this
set. I still listen to this for inspiration and I wouldn’t
feel too lonesome on a desert Island if I had this to
keep me company. I will never get tired of listening
to B.B.
– Otis Grand
Why was B.B. King so universally loved?
Perhaps it was how he signified the American
dream, coming out of the cotton fields of
Mississippi to international acclaim. Could have
been that he was the quintessential gentleman
who was kind, classy, and made the effort to dress
up out of respect to his audience. The humorous
banter he had with his fans while in song that
allowed us to share and understand the human
condition, may have contributed. Or was it the
passionate and sincere intensity of his vocal
delivery that made us feel and believe? He could
connect us all together, no matter how otherwise
disparate, through the compassion he engendered
as an observant world traveler. But maybe it was
as simple as this: transcendence from the first note
he played in that singular tone he had, that took us
to another plane of existence, above the mundane,
away from our problems, and into a trancelike
nether world from which we didn’t want to return.
– Carl Gustafson – Blinddog Smokin’
24 Blues Music Magazine
I have had the good fortune to hang with
B.B. everywhere from a festival in a bullring in
Spain to dinner in his home to the White House
itself. And he was always the king at making others
feel loved and welcome. I remember having a
picture taken with him and he said, “Put your arm
around me and pretend that you like me.”
He was a tease and an incredible flirt with
women. If I’d see him coming, I’d quickly put my
arm around Shemekia [Copeland] hugging her
close and say, “How you doing B?” To which he
replied, “Not as good as you, you dirty dog.”
He had a wonderful, sweet, self-
deprecating sense of humor. I loved and will
always love the music of B.B. King. But not as
much as I loved the man.
The fact that he played guitar and sang on
a duet I wrote for Koko Taylor called “Blues Hotel”
is one of the proudest achievements in my life.
– John Hahn
I’ve had the honor of producing B.B. King
in the recording studio. Most artists record their
instrument track and then put their instrument
down and record their vocal part. B.B. would
always sing and play those tracks at the same
time. I would sit beside him as he sang and played.
I would point to the line on the lyric sheet, and he
would sing it. He would ask me about the lyrics and
how he should phrase them.
I’ve worked with a lot of great singers,
but he had the best phrasing of any vocalist I’ve
ever been around. He would hand me Lucille (his
guitar) and talk about his life in between takes. He
would tell stories about meeting presidents, popes,
queens, and other kings. He had met so many
presidents he told me, “Presidents come and go
but they all want to meet the “King.” Ironically I got
to play drums on “Sweet Home Chicago” with him
at the White House with President Obama.
 I remember sitting on his bus behind the
Ryman Auditorium in Nashville before one of
his concerts playing him the mix of a song I had
written and produced for him. He kept wanting to
hear it over and over. He kept smiling and saying,
“I love it, now play it again.” There was a line
of people outside the bus waiting to have there
moment with the King so I was trying to find a
way to make my exit so others could get on board
before he had to go onstage. I finally left the CD
with him and said goodbye. I remember my friend
Kenny Wayne Shepherd told me that he went on
the bus to talk to B., and B.B. kept playing him my
song.
I’ll never forget him announcing from the
stage that they had some special people in the
audience that night. He included me on that list.
I thought for a moment I was dreaming. In my
opinion blues sounds like blues because B.B.
played it that way. His guitar tone, dynamics, and
vibrato were uniquely his own, but now everybody
plays that way. B.B. was a gentleman, a friend, and
a tremendous ambassador for the blues. He made
the world a better place. God Bless the King!
– Tom Hambridge
Mr. B.B. King will always be the standard
for the blues in Mississippi. Though the blues took
you all over the world, you never left Mississippi
out as the birthplace of the blues. You inspired
generations of us growing up with surviving more
challenges than anyone needed to. You were
always a shining example of statesmanship, and
you made us proud.
I personally reflect on the times that I saw
you when you came to Jackson, Mississippi, and
parked the bus on Farish Street in Jackson. Seeing
you come into my father’s store and speak with my
father about items that you needed.
Then going to the Mississippi Homecoming in
Fayette and watching you there as the featured
performer, then later talking music with you after
shows when I was guitarist for Dorothy Moore
and she was opening for you in the 70’s. All that I
as well as what an entire generation of bluesman
learned from you will always keep the blues alive.
You will be missed but never forgotten. Long live
the king, B.B. King.
– Zac Harmon
I was fortunate to have seen B.B. King
perform a number of times over the years. The first
time I saw B.B. was at what is now considered his
‘major cross-over’ performance, at Bill Graham’s
Fillmore West, in San Francisco, in June of 1968.
As the album from that performance attests, it was
a great show, and it certainly marked the onset of
B.B.’s ascent as a major draw with rock audiences.
In the late 1970s, I saw BB King in tandem
with Bobby “Blue” Bland, his longtime good friend
from their early days together as young musicians
on Beale Street in Memphis in the late 1940s.
This show was at the Circle Star Theatre, in San
Carlos, CA, a venue that featured theatre-in-the-
round seating, with a slowly revolving large stage
that allowed the entire audience to see, hear, and
experience the show extremely well from every
seat in the house. Both of these superb blues
artists, as always, gave excellent performances,
highlighted by their sharing the stage for a couple
of classic blues tunes together to close the show.
B.B. always gave his audiences a
great show, but my favorite, most memorable
performance of his was not at a concert featuring
his own music. On January 27th, 2010, B.B. King
was one of the special guests invited to perform at
his old friend Bobby “Blue” Bland’s 80th birthday
party, for a sold out crowd of 2,000 friends and
home folks in Tunica, MS.
Blues Music Magazine 25
 B.B. King sat at a table, down front, in the
audience, obviously enjoying the evening’s
festivities and the music of Clarence Carter,
Millie Jackson, Denise LaSalle, and other guest
performers.
About halfway through the show, B.B.
came on stage and played and sang just one
song, and then he and Bobby “Blue” Bland sat
comfortably together at center stage. B.B. was on
hand to honor and celebrate his old friend, and he
did just that, to the utmost. He drew Bland into on-
stage chit-chat just like they were sitting together
privately backstage. The two of them cordially
and cheerfully reminisced about their many years
as friends and fellow musicians, sharing stories
about good times and bad times, and even
singing snatches of a few of their favorite songs
together. It was a most memorable night with so
many great blues and R&B performers on hand
to honor Bobby “Blue’ Bland’s birthday, but the
highlight for me was B.B. King’s sincere, gracious,
and thoughtful kindness in helping to make his
old friend’s 80th birthday party really special for
everyone.
– Michael “Hawkeye” Herman
B.B. King was one of the first older blues
men that I both heard on LP (still have it), got to
see perform, and shake his hand. I went to East
L.A. City College to watch B.B. do a free blues
guitar workshop in 1970 or ‘71. About 200 in the
audience heard an intimate lecture and musical
snippets of B.B.’s influences.
It was my introduction to names like
Charlie Christian, Django Reinhardt, Bukka White
(King’s uncle), Robert Nighthawk, Lonnie Johnson,
Elmore James, T-Bone Walker, and more whom
I’m probably forgetting at the moment. It opened
my eyes to how many influences make up a well-
rounded musician’s playing!
26 Blues Music Magazine
After the workshop there was a long line of
audience members that came up, shook his hand
and asked questions. I waited until it was my turn,
but all my 15-year-old brain could think of was, “Do
you know Muddy Waters?” I stammered.
B.B. looked surprised at the question and
said, “Yes.” I just countered” Wow.” B.B. looked
confused by my thoughtless question but was
very polite about it. I walked away seeing how
much time B.B. was willing to give his audience
as he didn’t leave until he had shaken every hand
and answered every question. It was a lesson in
humility and a total example in how spreading the
blues gospel is paramount.
I saw B.B. many times after this and he
always delivered a classy show and gave his all.
My favorite was at Jazz & Heritage Festival in New
Orleans as it felt like a homecoming for him and he
played his tail off. A few times I was backstage and
B.B. was always totally welcoming to everyone in
his dressing room, never one to have an attitude.
As a musician, King is what Little Walter is
to harmonica, an out and out icon in a total class of
his own. B.B.’s voice was so great he needn’t have
picked up a guitar and he still would have been a
stunning artist!
King’s guitar has gone through so many
phases and styles it’s kind of mind boggling. His
playing is so reflected in all the greats – Earl
Hooker, Eric Clapton, Otis Rush, Magic Sam, Louis
Myers, Matt Murphy, Jody Williams, Lafayette
Thomas, Peter Green, Buddy Guy, Freddie King,
Mike Bloomfield plus countless other younger and
older players.
– Mark Hummel
PHOTOGRAPHY © DAVID HORWITZ
 In 1973, Hound Dog Taylor, Alligator’s Then B.B. began a slow blues and sang
first artist, opened a show for B.B. King at a big one of the oldest traditional blues lyrics, a lyric
downtown theatre in St. Louis. Only two years full of meaning. He sang, “I can hear my black
before, Hound Dog had been playing entirely at name ringing all up and down the line.” It was a
local South and West Side Chicago clubs for 50 ballsy thing for B.B. to do, to make an overt racial
or 100 people a night. Now he was opening for reference in this whiter-than-white situation, and
the King of the Blues. To our amazement, B.B., in also make reference to the stigma that darker-
his remarkably gracious manner, came to Hound skinned black people had among lighter-skinned
Dog’s dressing room to say ‘hello.’ Yes, he came to black people. (Remember, B.B. was the man who
greet his opening act. It’s not what you expect the said that “playing the blues is like having to be
headliner to do. black twice.”)
A few months B.B. King was reaching
later, B.B. was playing out over a couple hundred
at the London House, white businessmen in
a ritzy Chicago supper suits and women in
club on Michigan cocktail dresses and
Avenue. It was the saying to Hound Dog
kind of upscale, Las Taylor, “There’s a cultural
Vegas-ish place that statement, a shared
B.B. was often playing history and a racial bond
at the time. Normally, between us that’s at the
the patrons (usually heart of this music. You
successful white and I feel and understand
businessmen and their it even in this slick place
wives or girlfriends) where most people are just
would spend a lot of having dinner – something
money having dinner that nobody else in this
and seeing the show. room has more than an
But you could stand at inkling of. I’m a big star,
the bar in the back of and you’re a local bar
the club and hear the blues musician, but that
music for the cost of a doesn’t matter. We both
couple drinks. share this music and its
Hound Dog meaning in a way that no
and I decided to go one else in this room can.”
to the London House I stand in awe of B.B.
to see B.B. from the King for making that
bar. B.B., who was bold, personal outreach
perhaps 100 feet – to speak soul-to-soul
away, spotted Hound PHOTOGRAPHY © JOSEPH A. ROSEN to Hound Dog of their
Dog standing in the blackness and cultural
back of the club. He identity in that lily-white
got on the microphone and said, “We’ve got a situation took both nerve and depth of being. The
wonderful blues musician in the house. How about man is a giant and deserves every accolade he’s
a nice round of applause for the great Hound Dog ever gotten.
Taylor?” Hound Dog was thrilled. He was walking – Bruce Iglauer, founder and president Alligator
on air; B.B. King had introduced him! Records Blues Music Magazine 27
 I’ve known B.B. King personally for over everybody like he’s known them for years.
45 years. He’s been kind to me from that very I’ve been on stage with him twice. The first
first moment. He called my 10-year-old kid up on- time was that Fillmore weekend in 1970, when I
stage in Oregon 28 years ago, introduced him to recorded the interview that became part of Dick
the crowd, and handed him his guitar pick. Every Waterman’s book with B.B. The Fillmore’s stage
time we’ve talked since, he’s asked me how my door guard, a 40-ish black gentleman, didn’t want
“little boy” was doing. When I’d say something to let me in. I told him B.B. had asked me to come
like, “Uh, B., the little boy is 28 now,” he’d roll his and play the jam with him. The guard told me to
eyes and we’d have one of those collective old guy wait by the door. When B. came in, carrying his
moments. own guitar, he saw
He’s always me looking helpless
remembered me in the corner. He
because he also sized up the situation
remembers I in an instant, turned
was there when to the guard, who
he “suddenly” was already in full
became famous, reverence mode, and
and he knows said, “He’s with me,”
that his fame was and waved me in.
never important Later, during the
to either of us. jam, the other guitar
My ex and I players were either
drove up to too intimidated or
Vancouver to downright petrified to
see him circa kick off the first tune.
1980, and after So I did.
the show he The second
offered to get time was the most
us a room in the memorable of my
hotel because musical life. It was
he didn’t want at the Nyon Fest in
us driving back Switzerland in July
to Seattle at 2 1985. He called me
a.m. I once even up out of the photo pit
received a letter to jam with himself,
from him when Luther Allison, and
he was on tour Big Miller. When he
in New Zealand, PHOTOGRAPHY © JEF JAISUN realized my guitar was
thanking me for already in the lockup,
writing to him. What “superstar” ever does that? he offered me Lucille! I
I’ve never met a man more generous with kid you not. And he meant it. No, of course I didn’t
his time. In 1993, after a lengthy show at Concord accept. I played piano instead. But still.
Pavilion, he signed autographs for 300 people who – Jef Jaison
had VIP passes. It took him two hours, because, of
course, B.B. doesn’t just sign, he talks to

28 Blues Music Magazine

 When a person changes the entire course
The love and respect is felt so deeply. It’s sad,
of your life, it sure is difficult to sum it up in a
beautiful, and inspiring. I think about B.B. King
few lines. That is exactly how I felt when I was
every day, and if you do too, he will live forever.
22-years-old and B.B. King asked for my autograph
– JW-Jones
on a CD I was giving to him. I am positive that I’m
not the only young blues guitarist with a similar
story of B.B. making them feel special, and the
way he made people feel is why he was such a
wonderful role model. “Dear B.B.,” I paused…
“Thank you for changing my life, and for everything
you’ve done.” One might think that being at his
level of fame would go to a man’s head, but not B. B.B. King was influencing my music and
He was the consummate gentleman. me long before I came into the blues. When I was
Having studied B.B.’s guitar playing for performing country music, I always seemed to
hundreds of hours, listened to him for hundreds gravitate toward the bluesier songs. There was
more, and having spent time with him on several something in them that made me feel at a deeper
occasions, I realize how extremely fortunate I’ve level. And believe it or not, I learned “The Thrill Is
been. Just recently, I taught a guitar class on Mr. Gone” from a Barbara Mandrell album. And guess
King: his stinging 1950’s style, 1964’s extremely who was playing guitar for her on that album? It
influential Live At The Regal, and the King’s more was B.B. King.
recent tone and approach. Hearing the way his He taught me that I don’t have to play a lot
playing evolved over the years is eye opening and of notes to be able to make people feel the music.
an inspiration in itself. B.B. has the ability to hear the music between the
After I performed in front of Buddy Guy, he notes and can make you feel more with one note
said, “I like the way you play that B.B. King stuff.” I than anyone I’ve ever heard.
said that I was trying to throw some Buddy Guy in I was honored to work some shows with
there too when he replied “It’s all B.B. and T-Bone.” him, and even though he was in a wheel chair
Buddy and guitarists like Little Milton, Otis Rush, going to and from the stage, he still “picked” Lucille
and Luther Allison know exactly where it all came like nobody’s business. My mentor, Koko Taylor,
from. Many young guitarists today are playing riffs always told me that B.B. was like a brother to her.
that they think originate with Hendrix or Clapton, They paved the way for so many of us, and we’ll
but they don’t realize that it all stems from B.B. be forever grateful for their music that has touched
King. millions. I’m so glad I’ve had B.B.’s music as part
I am too young to have seen Muddy of the tapestry of my life. I truly adore him. He is a
Waters and Howlin’ Wolf, but old enough to have great man, an icon. And I love him.
seen Robert Jr. Lockwood, Buddy Guy, Hubert – EG Kight
Sumlin, and B.B. King. In years to come, blues
fans and artists will no longer have access to the
truly original blues artists that shaped this music
in it’s most significant and influential days. That
breaks my heart. I can’t imagine a world without
them. During the B.B. class, and as I write, I can
feel myself getting choked-up and teary-eyed. It’s
amazing how the influence of an artist can make
you feel so close to them.

Blues Music Magazine 29


PHOTOGRAPHY © COURTESY OF BETTYE LAVETTE
I don’t know how many young blacks know
that B.B. King is the bridge we came across on.
And I don’t know how many young white blues
people know that, when I started in 1962, B.B. was
almost a pariah in the up and coming “Sound Of
America.” From 1960 until “The Thrill Is Gone,” we
thought of him as an old blues singer, something
which we did not want to be associated with. For
which I will ALWAYS be ashamed.
And then, in 1964, I saw him at the Apollo
Theatre with his big band, on a Saturday night.
I’ve tried, to be ASSOCIATED with him ever since.
Nobody can replicate him, and nobody ever will. I
love you B.B.
– Bettye LaVette
30 Blues Music Magazine
“B.B. is the great ambassador. I met him
for the first time at LAX when he was here to film a
Sanford and Son episode. We were waiting at the
same baggage claim. I got my guitar and opened it
up to check it out and I heard a voice say, ‘That’s a
nice looking guitar you got there.’ I said, ‘Thanks.’
He looked familiar to me so I said, ‘Do you play?’
He said, ‘You might have heard of me, my name
is B.B. King.’ My jaw nearly dropped on the floor. I
said, ‘The B.B. King? The blues man?’ He replied
with that smile of his, ‘Yes, that’s me.’ I told him he
looked different from when I’d seen him in Norfolk
and St. Louis. He patted his stomach and said,
‘Life’s been pretty good.’ We shared a good laugh
and talked about guitars as the bags came down.
I’ll never forget how gracious and humble he was.”
– Doug MacLeod
The King and I Janiva Magness
B.B. King. Music like his comes along once in an
entire century, probably less. Would it be accurate
to say that B.B. King is THE most influential
guitarist and singer known in modern times? I am
certain of it. The vein of gold that he gave to the
world, in my view, is deeper than any other known.
He played and sang in such a special way. This
was a private conversation between the two of
you. He was always ever speaking to one special
person and it was riveting and unquestionably
personal.
As the result of that dialogue, we stop in
our tracks when he calls to us. “Oh! B.B. King is
playing that song for ME! Speaking directly to
ME! He must have been reading MY mail. Such
blistering truth to the bone.
There are literally millions of listeners who
have had that very same experience. It has also
been said many times that his guitar and voice are
easily identified in one note. ONE NOTE! Consider
that for a moment, allow that to sink in.
 One note in a world of constant partial Back in the mid-‘90s, B.B. King performed
attention, where no one is singularly focused on at the Skyline Stage at Navy Pier in Chicago.
ANYTHING anymore. We operate as if we are I had the opportunity to accompany renowned
multitasking machines in a world at times that photographer Peter Amft (whom I knew while
at times appears to be imploding and suddenly working as Art Director at Delmark Records), on
there rings ONE note coming from a speaker an assignment for Blues Revue to capture B.B.
somewhere, and it is unquestionably and for the cover of the upcoming holiday issue that
irrevocably B.B. King, and he is speaking to me, in year. Peter’s idea was to have the blues icon
a most profound way. That is the gift. wear a Santa hat, holding his dear Lucille close
The year 1971 was a phenomenal year to his face. Good concept, though B.B. wasn’t all
for me. I was barely 14 years old yet, had a pretty too thrilled with wearing that silly hat, and it was
good idea what was coming when Mr. King stole showing on his face, as in he wasn’t smiling, which
the show from Quicksilver Messenger Service at a was making for a less than ideal cover shot!
concert in Minneapolis. I had his records already. Then Pete said, “Kate! Go sit by B.B. for
Safe to say, the majority of the young, hormonal a shot!” He thought this might loosen him up and
white audience had no idea they were about to trigger a grin. Peter’s intuition and experience as a
be anointed in the blues. I loved being in it and photographer paid off, as it did make B.B. flash his
watching it happen. genuinely warm smile. Bad news was: it couldn’t
It has been one long and crooked journey be used for a cover with me in the frame!
since that night in 1971. Imagine my shock in – Kate Moss
2009 when I was nominated and won the Blues
Music Award for B.B. King Entertainer of the Year
Award in Memphis. Mr. King was the presenter
that year with Ms. Bonnie Raitt as the trophy gal.
For me, in that moment when the Man himself
called my name, every note and nuance, every cry
and quiver of B.B. King’s voice and most trusted
companion Lucille ever made, all came rushing
thru me as I walked to the stage. Totally surreal.
I still tear up with when asked to talk about that
night.
No one can begin to comprehend that
moment for me. I know it was real because I have PHOTOGRAPHY © COURTESY - KATE MOSS
seen pictures and have a piece of hardware that
says so.
Still, the memory of that night remains the
dream of a 14-year-old girl who first witnessed B.B.
King slay an entire unsuspecting audience of kids
in Minneapolis.
So, in 2009 as I approached the stage and
Bonnie handed me the hardware, I took the hand
of the King. I had the chance to thank Mr. King
for all of it. All I could do was grin like a smitten
14-year-old girl. You know why right? It simply
don’t get any better than that. Long live the King.
– Janiva Magness
Blues Music Magazine 31
 I saw B.B. King perform several times
over the years, but the first still remains the most
memorable. It was Sunday evening of July 4th
weekend at the 1969 Newport Jazz festival. My
two friends and I had been there since Thursday,
sleeping in the car and seeing and hearing an
almost overwhelming array of the biggest names in
jazz and rock.
Earlier in the day, we spent an afternoon
listening to James Brown, who had an entire revue.
The night before, Sly and the Family Stone caused
a riot with their irresistible, rocking soul. So, we
were tired going into the Sunday night show.
Buddy Rich’s big band played, amongst other jazz
artists and B.B. King took the stage. He was at the
height of his powers and his set was powerful and
tight. His voice and Lucille’s, took turns testifying.
After he played, an exciting “new” artist came out
and dazzled the crowd with his loud, rocking blues.
It was Johnny Winter, whose brand new Columbia
Records album was just released. He played
through eight Twin Reverbs and his slide playing
was incredible.
Toward the end of Winter’s set, B.B. came
out and jammed with Johnny and his band which
consisted of Tommy Shannon on bass and “Uncle”
John Turner on drums. The two guitar slingers
jammed back and forth, and it was the only time I
ever saw B. play like this. He played fast, rocking
lines, Wes Montgomery-styled octaves, and
demonstrated a command of the finger board with
an abandon I never saw again. He has always
played with the feeling, taste, tone, and restraint
that was his trademark. This was a unique and
wonderful jam! Sidebar: Led Zeppelin closed that
night at Newport.
In 1990, ironically on July 4th, I spoke
backstage with Tommy Shannon after Stevie Ray
Vaughan and Double Trouble’s incendiary set at
Lake Compounce in Bristol, CT. I brought up that
night with B. at the Newport Jazz Festival and
Tommy said, “You know, I’ve forgotten so many
of the shows since then, but I sure remember that
one!”
I got to meet B. in Burlington, VT. after a
show he did there in 1971.
32 Blues Music Magazine
I was hanging with friends outside by the stage
door and B. and his rhythm section were in the first
car and the horn section was in the second. They
were going to drive straight to Boston where they
had a show the next night. B. was sitting behind
the wheel of a large Thunderbird with a cassette
player on the front seat next to him with a stack of
cassettes to listen to. He was warm and welcoming
and when I reached out my hand to shake his, it
got lost. It was as if I had put it in a baseball glove.
To this day, it’s the biggest hand I’ve ever shaken
and its size was only exceeded by his heart.
– Mark Nomad
B.B. and the Bull
B.B. King has long been famous for his
“storytelling” solos, as they’re often described.
Cue “The Thrill Is Gone” or Live At The Regal and
you’ll hear what I mean. But he’s just as good
a storyteller in the traditional sense. Here’s one
of my favorites. One evening in 1993 B.B. was
commiserating backstage with John Lee Hooker
on the effects of aging. Leave it to B.B. to come
up with an optimistic spin: “Remember when you
was young?” he asked. “Somebody says, ‘C’mere!’
and you’d get up and start running. Now you think
about it: Do I really want to run, or should I just
walk on over there? “It’s like an old tale I’ve heard
about the young bull talkin’ to the old bull. He
looked down and see the female cows. Looked at
the old bull, say, ‘Hey, man, let’s run down there
and make love to one of the females.’ And the
old bull looked at him, over his glasses, and said,
‘Well, son, I’ll tell you what. Why don’t we just take
our time, walk on down there, and make love to all
of ’em?’”
– Jas Obrecht
 Late May 14, 2015, I, like all of Riley B.
Kings fans, friends, and disciples, learned that The
King of The Blues had gone on to Glory.
Weeks before, we all been told that he
was in hospice at His home in Las Vegas and
like the gentleman that he was, he had kindly
let us know that He was resting comfortably
and yes He appreciated each and every one of
our thoughts and prayers, emails and letters. It
seemed to me that like his big, soft hands were
comforting us as if to say, “It’s alright, y’all don’t
worry ‘bout ‘Ol B.”
I remember the first time I saw B.B. in the
flesh. It was a hot Austin Texas summer night was
the late ‘70s and Antone’s was packed! I’d never
seen anything like it. The audience was mostly
black with a few of us longhaired white kids thrown
in. The men were dressed to the nines most with
boutonnieres and the ladies all wore bodaciously
beautiful hats and their Sunday best. The only
difference was, it was Saturday night, not Sunday
morning!
The band was more like an orchestra.
There was a tight, kickin’ rhythm section and a full
horn section with a conductor. The band played
a couple of standards to warm up the crowd
and then, with a snare press roll, the conductor
introduced, “And now Ladies and Gentlemen, The
King Of The Blues, B. B. KING!”
He hit the stage with a fury; the sweat
flying off his brow and the twirl of his left hand’s
vibrato was like nothing I’d ever witnessed before
or since. It changed me forever. Now I knew what I
had only imagined. It was like a wall had hit us and
it was good and we were all better for it.
He gave us all a scare though. Near the
end of the set, they blew into “You Upsets Me
Baby” at breakneck speed and at the final verse
lyric, “I better stop now cause I got a weak heart,”
he clutched his chest and fell back! Only to be
caught by four very well positioned and very
strong band members. It was a gag. One I wasn’t
prepared for. It truly scared me. I was not ready to
lose B.B. King yet.
Many years later, I found myself opening
for B.B. on several occasions.
We got to play together on-stage. Once on his
birthday and the last time I had the honor to play
with my hero and friend, Steve Cropper, Buddy
Guy, Willie Nelson, Robert Cray, and I all gathered
to open B.B. King’s in Las Vegas. B.B. sat front
and center in a chair fit for a King, enjoyed the
show, and even played a few with us. But that
night, we were there for him.
When I got the news, was I sad? Yes, of
course I was, but moreover what seemed to wash
over me was the feeling that B.B. King had spent
89 years on this earth living better than any one
man I knew Truly, a life well lived. The lives he
touched, the burdens he lifted, the generations of
young guitar players encouraged and challenged
to work just a little harder, it is impossible to know
how many millions of lives he changed for the
better.
We will all miss B.B. King, for there could
never be another. I feel so fortunate, just a kid from
Stephenville, Texas, who went from played along
to Live At The Regal over and over in my bedroom
to sharing the stage with my hero on all those
occasions. No, I still am not ready to lose B.B.
King but we can’t hold on forever. And then again,
maybe we can.
– Lee Roy Parnell
I started listening to B.B. King’s records
in the early 1960’s at the suggestion of my friend
David Cohen, who was an active studio guitarist. I
used to buy his LPs (Kent/Crown/United) out of the
.99-cent bin at my local supermarket.
In the summer of 1966, I went back east
with Long Gone Miles, where we gigged a little.
There I met an as yet unrecorded, but much
appreciated, Jimi Hendrix. When I returned to L.A.,
I saw that B.B. was booked to play at Gazzari’s on
the Sunset Strip. I called and found that there were
still tickets available. I couldn’t wait. I arrived and
didn’t see the expected throng. I entered a virtually
empty room. I couldn’t believe it.
Blues Music Magazine 33
I used the pay phone to call my girlfriend and a
couple of others.
By the time B.B.’s show started, with
vocalist Lu Watters (spelling?), there were no more
than eight of us in the audience. I was stunned.
B.B. took the stage and did his show fully and
energetically, never indicating in any way an
emotional reaction to the small numbers. I went
back the next night, with the same result. Those
there had a great, great show, and we applauded
as much as we could. But, loud and exciting blues-
based electric guitar with minimal backing was
ascendant among young rock audiences. B.B.’s
presentation, brilliant as it was, was out of fashion.
B.B. was to achieve his well-deserved recognition
in another few years, but never think that it was not
a paid-for or easy journey.
An auto shop stood adjacent to the Ash
Grove, my brother Ed’s club. One of the owners
was related to B.B., as he was to Bukka White,
who would spend some afternoons sitting on a
wooden milk crate chatting. It was Bukka who took
B.B. in when he arrived in Memphis, buying him
his first electric guitar. It was Bukka’s slide sound,
according to B.B., that inspired his famous vibrato.
B.B.’s tour bus would be brought in for servicing
at times, and once I was invited aboard. I entered
and saw a guitar case on a seat, and asked about
it. It was, indeed, Lucille. I asked permission to
open the case, and when I did, I saw a pack of
Black Diamond strings, the same as I used on my
acoustic guitar. Big surprise.
It was just a couple of years later, 1968 or
1969, when I was hosting “Nothin’ But the Blues”
on KPPC, L.A.’s first underground FM station, that I
was asked to interview B.B. on the air. “Why I Sing
The Blues” had just come out, and management
was very eager to introduce B.B. to the white blues
public. By that time Albert King and other more
pared-down black high-amplified blues artists had
been recognized by the young white audience, but
B.B. was still largely confined to the chitlin’ circuit.
What a wonderful talk we had, what a gracious
man. I was invited to his show that night at the
Long Beach Arena, with Charles Lloyd opening.
34 Blues Music Magazine
The place was largely empty, but B.B. did his show
as if the place was full. His road to recognition and
the ascent to general adulation was hard won.
– Bernie Pearl
Since I’m the “blues guy” at WBGO, I have
been assigned to interview B.B. King as well as
emcee his 1990 show at the Beacon Theater in
New York City. I have been listening to B.B. for
many years and, although he wouldn’t remember
it, met him at a show about fifteen years previously.
Prior to the official start of the interview,
he did a couple of IDs for the station. He knocked
each of them off in a single take. They are still in
use 25 years later. When you interview an artist of
King’s stature, you must realize that this is about
him and whatever (book, album, etc) that he is
promoting. I did my homework and was able to ask
him a couple of good questions about the record.
But I also asked him a question that had been on
my mind for quite some time: How does B.B. King
see himself? Is he a guitar player who sings? Or is
he a singer who plays guitar?
When you emceed for a big blues artist
in those years, you never introduced the star.
That was left a member of the group whose sole
purpose was to get the man on stage with the
audience pumped. Think of Scrap Iron with Little
Milton. In the case of B.B. King, this was the task
of BeBop, whose given name was unknown to me
and surely not known by the general public. My
task was to introduce the band who would
play a couple of songs to warm up before BeBop
took over. Once that was done out came B.B. King
and the band started in with “Every Day I Have
The Blues.” I have no particular memory of the
show except that B.B.’s show in those years was
very tight, all the pieces in place, everyone in line.
I know I enjoyed myself since one always enjoyed
oneself at a B.B. King show.
 And that question, how did he answer it? He
hedged. While I didn’t get my scoop, I should not
have been surprised at his response. More than
anything else, B.B. King was an Ambassador for
the blues, not just his own music. And he answered
that question like an Ambassador.
– Bob Porter
As it goes on I realize how sad it will be to
live in a world B.B. King is physically no longer in.
I’m sure he is resting peacefully, content at what he
has given to all of us. But we mere mortals have to
solider on and remember the impact that just one
human can have on this world. In my opinion, B.B.
King is up there with all the great Americans from
Abe Lincoln to Duke Ellington, Martin Luther King
to Louis Armstrong and all the other great men and
women who helped develop this country’s culture.
As the all-encompassing Internet, along with lack
of interest in our country’s true heritage, sees our
real roots slipping away, we need to honor the
things that are rich, deep and meaningful. B.B.
King is certainly one of those things.
– Duke Robillard
“Sweet Sixteen” was the first recording I
really “got it” as to B.B. King’s greatness. In truth,
he was a hero in the chitlin’ circuit, long before he
“crossed over.” Much later in life, I played with him
on a European festival tour. I was inside his tour
bus, introduced myself, and took a picture with
him. He was a most gracious and wonderful man.
Thank you Bro. King, your blues will live
forever.
– Mighty Mo Rodgers
A Moment with the King
Over the years I have had the privilege of being
the opening act on a number of shows for B.B.
King and also met him a number of times when
I played with John Lee Hooker. I know that you
have certainly heard it before, but I must say again,
he is, without a doubt, one of the most gracious
and generous men you would ever want to meet.
To illustrate the point, I opened for B.B. at Royal
Festival Hall in London many years ago. It is one
of the premier places to perform in London, and I
was simply honored to be there opening the show
for him. After my set, I decided that I had to go say
hello to B.B. backstage, wish him well, and also
give him greetings from John Lee Hooker.
When I was shown to his dressing room,
he looked at me and said, “Roy Rogers, what are
you doing here?” He had not been informed who
the opening act was. It had been awhile since I had
seen him and almost “apologetically,” he invited me
to come on in and sit down for a visit.
Now mind you, that was shortly before
he was to go onstage, but he insisted that I sit
down and wanted to know how I was doing, etc.
Knowing that it was really close to his set time, I
thanked him and wished to take my leave, because
he was due to perform very soon and I wished
to give him some space before his set, but he
asked me to please stay a little longer and then he
requested that I take a walk with him.
Probably from my excitement at just
getting to visit with him, I did not fully grasp what
was happening at that very moment, I just started
walking with him while he was still talking to me.
Then, all of sudden, we were at the curtains and
I heard his introduction from the band on-stage.
Somebody came up and gave him Lucille, he
thanked me, said goodbye and walked right out to
do his show! was absolutely stunned that he would
be so kind and had taken the time to talk to me,
literally up to his entrance. I never will forget it.
– Roy Rogers
Blues Music Magazine 35
 Talking about B.B. King is a little bit hard My first close up encounter with Mr. King
but I guess it’s a little bit easy when you think was in 1986. I had snagged one of the coolest gigs
he isn’t just B.B. King. He’s the King of what he in my early career: the Homecoming concert in
has done. It makes me think about how easy it the Grove, held at Ole Miss University in Oxford,
is, but that it shouldn’t be when I say what I’m Mississippi, warming up for the legendary B.B.
going to say. A king is someone who works hard. King! Our band was stoked to the max when we
Even though he ain’t on the throne, you have to arrived and saw Mr. King’s bus parked on the
work hard and labor hard to be crowned. You are outskirts of the beautiful green expanse of the
crowned king from the work you have put in. For grove.
B.B., 40-50 years ago, he wasn’t on the throne, he We set up and began our set. I sang
was on his way to be the king of the blues. I, and with all the fury and spit that my younger self
anyone following could muster.
him in his footsteps, My adrenaline
have to work hard was pumping
whether in music or til I thought I
any other avenue might pass out
you take for life. in the warm and
When humid Southern
looking at a king, air. Soon afterward
you look at someone B.B.’s band took
who labored hard. the stage and
B.B. King labored started their usual
really hard. It shows vamp music to
me to be crowned introduce Mr. King.
like he was or is He appeared
I know I have to on-stage bowing
work really hard. and waving to
It’s hard to become the delight of the
as great as he was, thousands or more
the king. I’ll try to be students gathered
as close to as great PHOTOGRAPHY © COURTESY REBA RUSSELL on the grounds.
as he was or is. To To my utter shock
be called a part of his crownship is good enough and awe, the first thing he said was, “How about
for me. Bless his labels, his king crown, the chair Reba people! How about Reba and the Portables!
he sits in, and everything he has done. There was Let me hear you!” He put his hand to his ear like
sweat, hardship, and thorns to get where he is. It he always does and made the crowd respond
wasn’t always so easy to be a king. It just looks thunderously. I felt my face flush and began to
like that from the outside. So hail to the king. He’s tear up with a rush of emotion as he said it over
the king to a lot of people. He’s the king now and and over! I am sure he had done that a million
forever. God bless the king. Bobby Rush to B.B. times before for everyone he shared a bill with,
King. May the King Rest in Peace. but for me, that moment was as if God himself had
– Bobby Rush anointed me.
After the show B.B. made his way back
to the area where his bus was parked and people
began to line up in front of a small table set up in
front of the bus.
36 Blues Music Magazine
We hurried over and someone in our band asked
B.B. if he would take a photo with us. He very
sweetly said, “I would be happy to but you all will
have to wait until I speak to the people who came
to see us and sign autographs.” We said we would.
It took about three hours. No joke. B.B. sat
there and signed until there wasn’t one person left
in the area. It was amazing to watch him graciously
shaking hands, taking photos, signing little cards
he had printed or albums people had brought
with them. We witnessed the kind and respectful
way he interacted with his fans and it was a huge
lesson that I carry with me to this day.
When everyone had gone, he waved us all
over and seemed impressed that we had been so
patient for the opportunity to share some moments
with him as well as get our photo. He instructed
us to get all around him, and as our guitar player’s
wife got ready to take the photo I lightly placed my
hands on his shoulders. As I did he reached up to
touch my hands. What a thrill! That brief encounter
with Mr. King lives deep inside my heart. I cherish
that photo, but don’t need it to remember that time
of sublime joy.
Twenty-four years later at the King Biscuit
Blues Festival’s 25th Anniversary, B.B. and I
were both on the roster. My bassist and husband
Wayne, anticipating B.B.’s performance, brought
that photo hoping to get B.B. to sign it. After B.B.’s
set, Wayne hung around, eventually
was able to get to Mr. King, and asked
him to sign the old photo. When he
saw the photo he raised his eyebrows
and said, “Well this sure was a while
ago.” As always, with great kindness,
he took pen in hand and autographed
it. Needless to say, it is one of our most
beloved possessions. I dearly love that
fine gentle man not only for his amazing
talent, but for his generous spirit and
tender manner.
– Reba and Wayne Russell
B.B. King was like a second father to me.
When I was 15 years old, Mr. King took me out on
my first national tour. At the end of that tour, he
invited me to his dressing room and sat me down
to offer some advice about life, the music business,
and a little bit about women. I was fortunate
enough to have toured with him many other times,
and I would always take the opportunity to go
see him when I had the chance, thus building an
invaluable personal relationship with him over the
past almost twenty-three years.
B.B. King is a man I admired, not just for
his incredible music, but also as a human being.
He always had a smile, he was gracious with his
time, and was always available to offer me some
advice and encouragement.
Every year, B.B. would make the time to
go back to his hometown in Indianola, Mississippi,
to perform a free concert, “for the kids” (as he
explained to me) and each year, after his free
concert, he would go to Club Ebony, one of the
places he had gotten his start, and he would play
until the wee hours of the morning. When we
filmed 10 Days Out: Blues From The Backroads,
our timing was perfect and lined up with B.B.’s
homecoming that year. He invited us to film at Club
Ebony, and I was able to sit in with him, in that
historic juke joint, and play “The Thrill Is Gone” with
The King.
PHOTOGRAPHY © AMANDA GRESHAM
 What a lot of people don’t know is that it
was my birthday that night and when I went on
B.B.’s bus to say hello before we started filming,
he sang “Happy Birthday” to me. When the film
crew discovered what they had missed, they asked
him to sing it again for the cameras. B.B. politely
declined explaining, “No, that was something
special just for Kenny.” Which is how he made
everyone feel, that you were the most important
person in the world while you were with him. I
always cherished my time with Mr. King and I am
grateful for the music he left us but mostly for the
stellar example he set for me and for anyone who
knew him.
– Kenny Wayne Shepherd
PHOTOGRAPHY © DAVID HORWITZ
I have a special little ledge in my dining
room, where I keep a few things near and dear to
me. There, among precious family treasures, is this
photo of B.B. King. I took this during the BMA’s in
1989 or 1990. His place on my ledge says it all for
me.”
– Bonnie Tallman
38 Blues Music Magazine
When I opened on a tour with Buddy Guy
and B.B. King, they asked me earlier in the day
if I wanted to get up with B.B. and I said, “Yeah.”
They prepped me before I went on about possible
songs. When his band leader, James Boland,
talked to B.B., they decided on “Everyday I’ve
Got The Blues.” I knew the song, but I listened
to a version to get some lyrics. I brushed up on
the words, and then after “The Thrill Is Gone,” he
brought me out and had me sit next to him. As
soon as I got there, he gave me a rose. I almost
started crying right there. He called off the key
of Bb, and I started playing rhythm as he sang.
We traded off verses and guitar solos. It was so
much fun, I thought I was in a dream. I was self-
conscientious about my tone because when he
started playing his tone was so amazing; I wanted
to put my guitar away. Then we started playing the
song “I Know.” I didn’t really know the words, so I
just made up some verses and he did too. Playing
with him was like driving a cool, old car like a big
old Caddy convertible with a big engine that drives
real smooth.
– Susan Tedeschi
In 1994 when I shared the bill with B.B.
King at Stockholm Jazz & Blues, I had no way of
knowing that 10 years later, I would actually one
day share the stage with B.B. King. If someone
had told me that I would sit in a chair between
B.B. King and Gladys Knight, and at his request,
I would have thought they were crazy. But life is
sometimes funny that way.
Our first “official” meeting was in 2001 at
Piazza Blues Festival in Bellinzona, Switzerland
where I was on the bill with B.B. King. I was in
the backstage area following what I thought was
my less than stellar, performance, but like all the
others in the green room, I was excited to get to
see the man!
 We were all waiting for his show to start, and I
could see Mr. King in his flashy suit sitting in a
chair at the stage entrance waiting for his band to
finish their instrumental selections. Then I saw Keb’
Mo’ walking through the crowd in my direction. As
he drew closer, I could see that he was actually
coming to me! “Earl, come with me! Quick! He
said, and without question, I followed him. “Where
are we going?” I asked. He just said, “Hurry!”
Suddenly I realized we were walking up
the stairs to the area where I had just seen B.B.
King, and there he was! B.B. King himself and he
was looking in our direction and smiling. At me!
As I got within hand shaking range, he held out
his hand to shake. I took his hand in mine, and he
pulled me close and looked me right in the eyes
and said, “Son, you took me to chu’ch!” (Chu’ch
is Ebonics for “church”). I was thrilled, stunned,
star struck, and quite unable to speak but finally
I managed a shaky “Thank you. Mr. King.” He
was very complimentary of my show, and I felt
validated. I remember telling him how proud my
parents would be if they knew I had met him and
how disappointed I was that there was no camera.
It would be two years before I saw him
again. This time, in San Diego. I was asked to
do a short opening set for his show at 4th & B.
There was only one dressing room at 4th & B and
my accompanist and I were told that when B.B.
arrived, we would have to clear out of the room. No
problem. We got the word that B.B.’s bus arrived,
and we immediately began moving toward the
exit. As we were walking out, I heard a voice from
behind me say, “Is that Earl Thomas?” I turned
to see that it was B.B. King! “Hey man,” he said.
“Last time I saw you was in Switzerland! How you
been?” OMG!
In 2004 I was invited back to Switzerland
to do the Montreux Jazz Festival. I was told that
I would be performing four shows, one on the
Stravinsky Hall main stage and three in the jazz
bar. The big news was that I was going to join B.B.
King and Gladys Knight onstage for the traditional
B.B. King jam session. This was going to be B.B.’s
last time in Montreux as he had reached the age
where traveling to Europe had become difficult.
The biggest news though was that B.B. King, yes
the man himself, had requested Earl Thomas to
join him for this spot. That night on Lake Geneva
was magical. Not only did I get to meet Gladys
Knight, I got to ride in the limo with B.B. to the
gig. Yes little ole Goody Bridgeman from Pikeville,
Tennessee, at the Montreux Jazz Festival in B.B.
King’s limo en route to one of the most prestigious
venues in the world! The song we sang was
“Stormy Monday.” I sat between B.B. King and
Gladys Knight, a million miles from 1994 and a
zillion miles from Pikeville, Tennessee.
– Earl Thomas
In August, 2011, Walter opened up for B.B. King
at the Pacific Amphitheatre in Costa Mesa. It was
a glorious Sunday. After the show, we waited
backstage for B.B. to come off the stage. He then
arrived riding on a golf cart with many people
around him. B.B. recognized Walter and shouted
a greeting. He told the golf cart driver to stop.
However, after making contact with Walter, he
immediately turned his attention to our 10-year-old
son, Dylan, who was standing with Walter. “Who
is that young man?” B.B. inquired. Walter said:
“That’s my son, Dylan.” B.B. then tapped on his lap
and said to Dylan: “Come up here young man.” He
asked Dylan a few questions and continued talking
with Walter and me.
After five minutes, B.B. continued on
the golf cart, and Dylan stepped down. He was
aglow with excitement. Driving home, Walter and
I were talking with Dylan about the experience.
Walter said to Dylan: “You know, you just sat on
B.B. King’s lap. He is not just a legend; he’s an
American icon.” Dylan chewed on that for a little
while and said: “Yes I know that, but when you
meet him, he is just like a friendly neighbor.”
– Marie Trout
Blues Music Magazine 39
 The first time I met B.B., was in 1968 His music, more than anyone else, showed me
and I was 17 years old. I worked after school in that the blues truly could be the most genuine,
a shopping mall in South Jersey. I walked past a heartfelt, honest, and emotional music there is.
record store, looked in, and recognized B.B. King, It set me on the path that I would follow for the
who was there shopping. I was completely star- rest of my life. And I am forever in his debt, and I
struck and very awkwardly approached him and am still incredibly star-struck. His body of work is
asked for an autograph. I told him I played the monumental and stands alone among the annals
guitar. He wrote: “To Walter – keep playing,” and of this music.
talked to me for almost an hour. He was the most – Walter Trout
gracious man I had ever met. I was on cloud nine.
He talked to me about the blues, he encouraged
me, and it was an experience I will never forget.

The second
time was 17
years later at
the Beacon
Theater in
New York
City. I was
with John
Mayall, and
we were on
a festival bill
with Charlie
Musselwhite,

PHOTOGRAPHY © LISA SEIFERT

John Lee
Hooker, Albert
Collins, and
B.B. King. He
was still the
most humble,
gracious man
I had ever
met. We did
many shows
together after
this, and he
always called me by my name, and made me feel (From Left To Right)
very special when I was around him. I consider him
the greatest blues man that ever lived, and I am Coco Montoya, Charlie
not open to discussion on that point. Musselwhite, B.B. King, John
Mayall, Deacon Jones, Walter
Trout, 1985.
40 Blues Music Magazine
 Hanging With The King
How could I ever predict that I’d open for the
legendary B.B. King. It was April 1998, thousands
of miles away from my Midwest town in the USA.
It was Gronau, Germany at the Gronau Blues
Festival where I was honored to get the crowd
ready for B.B. and Lucille.
How did this unknown blues girl end up
across the water with a King? It was the same
promoter who worked with my father Tommy
Tucker “Hi Heel Sneakers” that set it all up. Before
the show began, I learned that B.B. was not feeling
well, as I believe he had already been diagnosed
with diabetes. It never hindered his performance.
His voice and Lucille killed it. The people were in a
trance.
After his show, he tapped me on my
shoulder, his way if approving my performance.
Really, who would have thought a young unknown
blues girl from the Midwest and a legendary icon
from a small town in Mississippi would meet across
the waters and establish a connection that would
inspire her musical journey for life.
Fast forward ten years to 2008 at the
Monterey Bay Blues Festival in Monterey, CA. B.B.
was the headliner, and I was honored again to play
the same bill. After my performance, I sat in the
Monterey crowd, watched B.B. dazzle the crowd
with B.B. stories and Lucille. When the festival was
over B.B. invited Robert Hughes, my guitarist, and
me on the bus. From what I knew, it was rare to
get invited on his bus. I walked on the bus and my
heart was fluttering with joy.
B.B. was sitting in a big leather chair
styled for a king. B.B. did most of the talking
predicting my path I will hold that moment – the
conversation and the advice in my heart forever.
Priceless advice and praises from a King. I adore
and respect B.B. all he has given to the world and
especially the blues world. In his memory, we must
keep the blues alive!
– Teeny Tucker
When I was about 14 years old, I bought a blues
compilation record called Greats Of The Blues. It
was on that album that I first heard Muddy Waters,
Howlin’ Wolf, Ray Charles, Jimmy Reed, and the
great B.B. King. I wore a hole in that record right
over “Sweet Little Angel,” his voice on that song
just swept me away.
Years later I had the opportunity to see
B.B. King when I was in college with Koko Taylor
and Bobby “Blue” Bland in support. That show
changed my life. I couldn’t believe the sound of his
guitar, it was powerful and spiritual, it sang like a
bird and cried like a widower, it was the greatest
guitar sound I have ever stood in a room with.
All musicians are dreamers, but the rarest
kind of musician makes more dreamers, and even
rarer still is the musician that makes you go out
and buy guitars, start bands, and know that you
have to play from your heart and soul every time
because you “witnessed” something you can’t
forget. That was B.B. King to me. Years later, my
band had the distinct honor of opening for B.B.
King, the circle of the dream had come around
to the front, and I was humbled once again to
stand in the presence of true greatness, love, and
generosity. RIP BB King – We all love you.
– Chris Vos – The Record Company
“The eight blues stamps were being
dedicated in Greenville, MS., in September 1994.
B.B. flew into the Memphis airport and no one was
there to meet him. This would have been enough
for anyone else to turn back.
“So he rented a car on his own and
headed down I-55 to Greenville. He got stopped for
speeding, but they recognized him and after they
heard his story, they gave him a police escort the
rest of the way. He showed up four hours late, but
the show went on anyway.”
– Dick Waterman
Blues Music Magazine 41
 BluesMusic
42 Blues MusicMagazine
Magazine PHOTOGRAPHY © SCOTT SALTZMAN
“I call myself a
blues singer,
but you ain’t
never heard me
call myself a
blues
guitar man.”
- B.B. King

Blues Music Magazine 43

 B.B. King didn’t invent the blues. But he mortal obstacles, an everlasting tribute to the King
definitely personalized them. From the first note of the Blues.
on, you know who’s bending those strings. When – Grant Britt – contributing writer, Blues Music
he first started, nobody else played like him. Now Magazine
everybody does to some degree- there’s not a
guitarist alive who doesn’t have a King lick in his
repertoire.
“When I touch the string, my hand is not
on the neck at all, afterwards” the guitarist says,
attempting to explain his signature vibrato on his
instructional video, B.B. King, DCI Blues Masters
Vol 3, Tape 1. King says his sound comes from
the wrist. “You do it like you’re weighing a pound
of feathers over here,” he says, talking about
this right hand, “and a pound of lead over here,”
indicating his left, fretting hand. “It’s a little twist this
way and that way.”
B.B. King was already nearly a decade
That little wrist twist, a voice like a
past retirement age when we spoke on the phone
locomotive roaring through the Delta and an ability
in August 1999 to talk about his latest project, Let
to compose and perform music that appeals to all
The Good Times Roll, a tribute to Louis Jordan.
ages makes King one of the most recognized and
At 73, King was already taking a seat during his
beloved figures in blues. King’s persona is larger
performances, but he had no plans to stop touring,
than life but never overbearing. He commands a
no plans to stop making records, no plans to stop
stage, but his presence is that of a man possessed
imagining what might come next.
by the music, his performance a sharing of his
“The sky’s the limit. I never stop dreaming
powers, not an assault on the senses.
about the things we can do,” King said from a
The guitarist kept up a blistering tour
California hotel room while touring with the B.B.
schedule well into his late ‘70s, still continuing to
King Blues Festival, the multi-act show he had
do dates even though he was reduced to sitting
been leading for several years. That summer,
down to perform and filled a lot of his concert
those acts included guitar hero Kenny Wayne
time with lengthy anecdotes sprinkled with his
Shepherd and Indigenous, a blues rock band
homespun philosophy.
composed of young Native American musicians.
But even in his dotage, the fire still burned
King said such youthful artists – Shepherd
hot. He kept it damped down more often in later
was some 50 years younger than King –
years, but when he opened the furnace door in
brought him solace that someone would always
concert, the heat came boiling out. He’d slam into
be around to keep the blues flame burning.
“When Love Comes To Town,” the 1987 hit written
“When I’ m dead you won’t miss me,” King said.
for him by U2’s Bono, roaring with the energy and
“They will carry it on.” Of course, King was only
power of a man half his age. He still tackled “The
half-right about that. And he would continue touring
Thrill Is Gone” with the same vigor you saw on his
for more than a dozen years before old age and
1974 video Live In Africa when he was at the top of
diabetes cut him off from the very thing that had
his form.
been keeping him alive and nurturing his soul all
B.B. King will always be with us. His spirit
those decades.
and his legacy are powerful enough to survive any
“It’s still really fun for me. I have a chance to meet
a lot of young people and talk with them,” King said
a month shy of his 74th birthday.
44 Blues Music Magazine
 “Sometimes I forget I’m 73 because I’m around
young people and young thinking people all the
time – until my arthritis starts to hurt.”
King still had big dreams. He wanted to
hear his music on mainstream radio, a wish that
soon would come true when Eric Clapton teamed
up with him to record the 2000 chart-topping
Riding With The King album. And he wanted to be
a movie star. “I’ve been in many, many movies,
but I’d like to be a co-star in one with somebody,”
King said. “I’ve had some talking parts through the
years, but I’d like to go the whole route.” King didn’t
get that co-star gig. Instead he got the top billing in
the 2012 documentary “The Life of Riley.”
– Michael Cote
In the summer of 1968, I purchased my
first B.B. King record, the Bluesway single “Paying
The Cost To Be Boss” (b/w “Having My Say”). A
few months later I purchased Live At The Regal
and soon thereafter Blues Is King, unarguably
the two greatest live blues albums of all time. I
saw B.B. for the first time on a bill with the Rolling
Stones at the Spectrum in Philly, November of
1969. The manic hoopla surrounding that night has
obscured almost every memory except the Stones’
performance.
However, in 1970 I saw B.B. three times in
a seven-month span at three legendary venues in
three different states. They are my most cherished
memories of B.B. King. In March, B. B. opened
for Delaney & Bonnie with Eric Clapton at the old
Electric Factory in Philly. This time I was up close.
By the end of his set, my hands were sore from
clapping and my voice was hoarse from cheering.
In July, the Lambertville (NJ) Music Circus
presented the King of the Blues. LMC was a
theater in the round with an intermittently rotating
stage inside a circus tent. My friends and I were
thrilled to meet B.B. after the show. He spoke to
us in a cordial manner and genuinely appreciated
meeting such young (I was the oldest at 20) and
knowledgeable fans. (The following week we were
back at the LMC for Paul Butterfield.) In October
we traveled to the Fillmore East for an incredible
triple bill of Paul Butterfield, B.B. King, and Elvin
Bishop. We had tickets for the second show, which
commenced at 11:30 and concluded at 3:30 a.m.
Fifteen minutes later the principals (and various
sidemen) re-emerged for a lengthy jam. The sun
was coming up when we left the Fillmore East and
returned to Philadelphia.
– Thomas J. Cullen III – contributing writer, Blues
Music Magazine
Backstage with B.B. King:
The legend’s personal touch
B.B. King, inside the bright circle of television light,
asks someone to bring him a soda. The stage
crew, meanwhile, is hurriedly disassembling the
stage out in the arena. It’s 1990, deep inside an
aging civic center in Monroe, Louisiana.
He has been signing an endless stream
of albums, pictures, and scraps of paper in
his dressing room. King’s been interviewed,
photographed, and given the key to the city. His
concert has been over for hours, forever.
“What we want you to say, Mr. King,” the
TV person instructs, “is: ‘Hello, I’m B.B. King.
Blues Music Magazine 45
Lucille and I would like to encourage every one of
you to join the fight against crime in this parish.’
“What we want you to say, Mr. King,” the
TV person instructs, “is: ‘Hello, I’m B.B. King.
Lucille and I would like to encourage every one of
you to join the fight against crime in this parish.’
King considers it for a moment, and then
he looks some more at a piece of paper with notes
about what he’s supposed to say. There are a
group of people lining the walls of his dressing
room – friends, bodyguards, attendants, and the
never-ending line of families waiting for their sliver
of time with King. He takes time for it all, as if there
wasn’t any other place he’d rather be.
King has just finished performing for more
than 1,900 people, another in a lifetime’s tapestry
of nights spent weaving stories of love-gone-bad
and love-gone-for-good, all with his patented
butterfly-wrist guitar twang. He has now thrown
off his coat, and wiped his brow. It is well past
midnight on a Sunday morning, approaching one
a.m., but B.B. King doesn’t seem weary. In fact, he
looks like he’s just getting started.
King says: “Hello, I’m B.B. King. Lucille
and I, we’d like to join –” He stops, and smiles with
open joy. “We’ll do another; we’ll do another,” the
TV person says. King takes a deep breath: “Are we
ready? Alright,” he says, cheerfully. “O.K., Hello.
I’m B.B. King. Lucille and I would like to encourage
each and every one of you to join in and help the
fight against crime.”
The take is finally done. They cut the
camera off, and start spooling up cords and taking
down the lights. Then, King is up and ready to
leave. But he never does. “Alright, thank you all,”
he says, then starts right back in, with another
story. There are more tales to tell, more friends to
be made, more lives to touch. He’s been as patient
with the last as he was with the first.
Finally, what might have been the last
group files out of King’s quarters, only to stumble
into another smattering of fans and friends still
waiting in the hall. Several children traveling on
tour with King are walking up and down the arena
halls, patiently biding their time under fluorescent
lights that make their church clothes glow.
46 Blues Music Magazine
One of them, a boy wearing crooked glasses,
finally asks: “Is he done yet?” The man guarding
B.B. King’s door says: “Almost, son. In a little
while.”
– Nick DeRiso – contributing writer, Blues Music
Magazine
I come to this with some trepidation.
Although I’ve been a blues fan since high school
in the 1970s, I was not always a B.B. fan. (I am
now.) I was young and naïve; I loved Muddy and
Wolf and Little Walter. I thought B.B. was too
commercial, too polished, too jazzy. All those
horns? No harp player? I heard “The Thrill Is
Gone” on WBCN, the “rock of Boston” radio and
wondered if that’s the only example of blues
anyone around me knew.
Then, around 2000, I decided the time
had come to around go see B.B. live. How could
one be a proper blues fan and not have seen
The King? This was at elegant Symphony Hall in
Boston – not exactly my preferred juke joint setting.
The show was a kind of a disappointment. B.B.,
then around 75, rambled, didn’t finish songs, and
his handlers allowed annoying “super fans” to get
onto the stage and interrupt the show. But B.B.
stayed after the show until every single person got
to chat with him.
I started hearing some of B.B.’s other
music, mostly on Sirius Bluesvillle satellite radio.
It was fantastic! Songs such as “Three O’Clock
Blues,” I Gotta Move Outta This Neighborhood,”
“Since I Met You Baby,” and especially the hilarious
“Jack, You’re Dead.” That oh-so distinctive
shimmering guitar, the perfectly orchestrated
bridges, and solos – along with his early Memphis
recordings – such emotion– blew me away.
 I realized how ignorant and mistaken I was in my
earlier opinions.
To top it off, I discovered via Bill Wax’s
“You and Me with B.B. King” Saturday afternoon
radio shows on Sirius, just what kind of person this
man was, a extraordinarily kind, positive HUMAN
being who could spin magic with his stories.
He had fascinating tales about being a blues
musician throughout the decades, including when
he first began seeing white kids at his shows. He
described Johnny Winter “as the whitest man I had
ever seen.” B.B. has a great sense of humor, even
though some of his stories involve horrible times
when racism in the South was at its worst.
I also realized how influenced he was by
T-Bone Walker, Charles Brown, and Lowell Fulson,
all great musicians and favorites of mine. B.B. King
is a great bluesman. And I was totally wrong.
– Karen Nugent – contributing writer, Blues Music
Magazine
In 1968, I began buying every blues
album I could afford after seeing my first blues
concert that year (Muddy Waters was the artist).
I have more B.B. King recordings that any other
blues artist in my blues collection as his music is
eminently listenable and his live recordings still
jump out of the speakers. I Have been fortunate
enough to have seen him perform in Philly,
Camden, Long Beach, Dana Point, and Los
Angeles, my fondest memories of him were in
the mid-‘90s when I had the immense pleasure to
see him perform not once but twice at the Apollo
Theater in Harlem. First of all, the clientele at the
Apollo dress to the nines! The red velvet seats
there are narrow, but they were all filled and the
audience shared a commonality of seeing a
performer that they all really loved. It was felt on
the stage. B.B. himself was dressed in a fine suit
and gave a performance each time that was never
equaled in any of the other venues. At the end,
he came out in tears and addressed the audience
humbly: “You gave me a chance here at the Apollo
in 1953, and I’ve never forgotten it. I hope that
tonight I was able to give something back to you
with my music.” With the resulting applause and
other noticeable tears in the audience, I was privy
to almost a full circle of this wonderful bluesman’s
career.
– Pete Sardon – contributing writer, Blues Music
Magazine
I was in sixth grade, in command of the TV
room as I had won the battle with my siblings to
hold the pair of pliers that changed the channels. A
rerun of Johnny Carson was on, and a man holding
a big guitar walked from behind the curtain and
proceeded to blow my mind. I didn’t really care that
he played guitar, it was the power and emotion of
his singing that held me transfixed. Though it must
have been around the time of “The Thrill Is Gone,”
that wasn’t the tune, I can’t say for sure what it
was. Doesn’t really matter. It was my first “Blues”
moment. I was astonished and affected like no
other performance I’d ever seen.
I remember Carson had him over to the
couch and how good humored and gracious he
seemed. Many years later, this scene flashed
through my head as I was a fly on the wall while
my friend Bill Wax interviewed B.B. in a tiny studio.
All I could think of was, “Well, How Did I Get
Here?” We’d been to a show a week before, and I
printed out some pictures I’d hoped he sign.
Blues Music Magazine 47
He picked one up, gave it a good look, and
commented on how he liked the fact that trumpeter
James “Boogaloo” Bolden was prominent in the
background. “I can have one, right?” Whoa, it
hadn’t occurred to me that he’d want one, I figured
someone of his stature already had a couple of
good pics. Even if he tossed it into the trash in
the tour bus, it made me feel special. Of course,
I kept one, and it’s never leaving my wall! For all
his immense talent, his biggest gift may have been
how special he made others feel.
– Bob Sekinger – contributing writer, Blues Music
Magazine
I recall an October or November early
1990’s press conference at the Blue Note jazz
nightclub on West Third Street with B.B. King,
to announce the release of an autobiographical
CD-ROM about his life and musical times. For
whatever reasons, there were only a handful of
us there. So I felt compelled to ask a question:
“What’s your take on what’s going on in the world
of contemporary blues these days, where it seems
like 80 percent of the touring acts are white guys
and gals, while only about 20 percent of these
acts are actually African-American people?” He
said something to the effect, “I’m grateful for all
the white musicians that are out there, carrying
the torch for the music and keeping it in front of
people, because they help to keep me out here on
the road, too.”
Everywhere he went, he brightened
people’s days and made them smile. Like Louis
Armstrong, he would stay around in the dressing
room or on the tour bus at his concert sites until
every last autograph seeker or photo seeker was
accommodated.
48 Blues Music Magazine
Thankfully, because of B.B.’s efforts, there are
blues festivals in almost every big city around the
U.S. and Canada. Now, we have to follow up on
Buddy Guy’s vision and take it one step further,
demand that our commercial radio stations in mid-
size and big cities play blues on the radio in prime-
time slots.
– Richard Skelly – contributing writer, Blues Music
Magazine
Like many of my generation, I grew up
listening to rock and the blues as filtered through
the English invasion bands – Stones, Animals,
etc. I was consumed with researching for more
information on songwriters with unusual names
like McKinley Morganfield and Chester Burnett.
Reading Hit Parader magazine one day, I spied
a column by Eric Clapton discussing his favorite
records. At the top of his list was a record titled
Live At The Regal by B.B. King.
It took some doing to get my hands on a
copy. And despite Clapton’s accolades, I was not
prepared for the experience of that first listen – the
visceral excitement of an audience hanging on
every note poured out by a masterful storyteller
and guitar player.
In high school, I was interested in
journalism, working on the school paper, which
lead to an internship with the local newspaper. My
adviser, G.C. Skipper, was a veteran newsman
raised in Alabama. In short order, we discovered
that we shared a lot of the same musical interests,
including blues music. As my internship was
wrapping up and college was dead ahead, G.C.
and his wife invited me join them for a trip to
Chicago to see B.B. King at the famous Mister
Kelly’s nightclub.
I quickly accepted their generous offer, and then
headed home for a marathon listening session with
the Regal album.
I remember three things from that night.
The way the sustained notes from B.B.’s guitar
hung in the air, each one a brief vignette on life.
Then there was his voice, so powerful that I
couldn’t help but get wrapped in his descriptions
of bad luck and heartbreak. But what made the
deepest impression was the joy and passion that
B.B. had for the music. Sure times may be tough,
and he certainly had more than his share of hard
times, but he was standing tall and showing us that
music has the power to overcome and heal the
human spirit.
There will never be a finer ambassador
for blues music. B.B. had that rare combination
of being an outstanding musician and singer
in addition to having a gentle, loving spirit that
endeared him to family, friends, and fans. He
served as the inspiration for countless aspiring
musicians around the globe, just as the legacy
of his life will be the guiding light for future
generations to aspire to.
– Mark Thompson contributing writer Blues Music
Magazine
A few decades ago, I had the opportunity
to meet B.B. backstage while I was covering
a show in New Hampshire for a Boston
entertainment publication. We started talking,
and ended up sitting side by side. I found him to
be an intelligent, talkative, and funny person who
answered every question I had. After about a half
hour of talking privately to me in the band room
behind the stage, I asked him if I could take a
photo with him.
As we moved closer together and posed, all of
a sudden, in his big booming voice he yells: “Put
your arm around me AAAAAJAAAYY!” And I did.
Look at the photo. A King on and off the stage.
– A.J. Wachtel – contributing writer, Blues Music
Magazine
I’ve spent much of my adult life wanting to
have a conversation with B.B. King. I came close
in 1987 when I helped present him with a birthday
cake on stage at a summer blues festival, but
words were not exchanged. At the time, we didn’t
know about his diabetes, and he was too much a
gentleman to tell us that a great heap of chocolate
wasn’t on his diet. He also spared comment on
having to listen to 7,000 sun-baked fans, many of
them half-drunk, sing happy birthday. As I said, he
was too much a gentleman.
A decade later, I set up interviews several
times with him for a monthly blues column I wrote
for ICE magazine. But on each occasion, the
interview didn’t happen.
It’s probably just as well. Sometimes it’s
best not to meet heroes. Better to keep a distance
and retain the awe. I maintain there is nothing
wrong with hero-worship; it’s reality that is often a
bring-down. Besides, what could I have asked the
“King of the Blues”? The man’s had a very public
journey from segregated Mississippi in late 1940s
to wide-world fame more than 60 years later. Every
night he went on a stage he told us his life story
through the music.
So if somehow it had worked out that we’d
had that face-to-face conversation, I’d like to think
I would have skipped the interview questions and
just had the good sense to say, “Thank you, Mr.
King.”
– Bill Wasserzieher – contributing writer, Blues
Music Magazine
Blues Music Magazine 49
 King was his name, King was his title, and
he wore it with a style that redefined dignity for
a genre of music that knew no monarch until he
christened a Chicago nightclub with a record that
said it all, Live At The Regal with the accent on
Regal.
In 1965 I had to go into Boston’s “Combat
Zone” to score a copy of that defining ode to call
and response. The Harvard Coop had Muddy
Waters LPs. Briggs and Briggs on Mass. Ave had
Slim Harpo, and the college radio stations played
Howlin’ Wolf, but I had to venture into the hood in
Roxbury and Louie’s Lounge to see The King. That
show changed my life as he himself changed just
about every blues man’s life I’ve interviewed in the
last half century. He would work tirelessly for more
than 70 years to earn his namesake title.
John Hunter saw B.B. in the early ‘50s
and the experience turned him into a guitarist
literally overnight. I watched Buddy Guy and B.B.
visit backstage in Syracuse and experienced a
side of Buddy like never before or since. He was
a child at his first prom. I was fortunate enough to
recommend the underrated Rhett Tyler as opening
act for B.B. last year and watch him bask in the
King’s aura.
So humble and so sweet, B.B. told me
after his mother died he carried corn in his pocket
and fed it to the squirrels on the riverbed so that
he’d have someone to talk to.
“I just want you to know one thing,” he told
me in 2008. “Just remember I said I was no saint,
but I didn’t do anything I’m ashamed of today.
That’s one thing I can say if God’s willing. I never
did anything I was ashamed of. Never! Of course, I
did some things I wouldn’t let you see me do, but I
wasn’t ashamed to do it.”
He will never die in our hearts or in his
recorded presence. To generations of blues
performers B.B. King will forever be live at the
Regal.
– Don Wilcock – contributing writer, Blues Music
Magazine

50 Blues Music Magazine

B.B. WAS ALL YOU HAD TO SAY
Like Prince or Madonna, a full name wasn’t
necessary when speaking of the King of the Blues.
Everyone – not just blues fans or guitar players –
knew who “B.B.” was.
When he died recently, it wasn’t just the
passing of a great man and musician. It was the
passing of the last universally-known bluesman the
world may ever see. Whether it was a nine-year-
old in Japan or a 90-year-old in Norway, B.B.’s
name was that iconic. Everyone knew who he was
even if they didn’t own his music. He toured and
recorded endlessly for decades, spreading and
re-spreading his name around the globe. Whether
he was playing for a pope or president, a king or
queen, B.B. easily transcended the blues genre as
an ambassador for both the music and the culture
from which it sprang.
Still, even after an array of awards and
accolades, King never forgot his roots or what
it was like to be a fan. Up through last year,
the legendary bluesman returned to his native
Indianola, Mississippi, every summer for a
special homecoming show. He was also known
to meet and greet his biggest fans after most
performances. What other cultural icons can we
say these things about? (I don’t know for sure, but
I’ll bet Madonna doesn’t go back home for a yearly
performance where she invites the neighborhood
kids up on stage and her fans onto the bus.)
A MEETING WITH THE KING
About 25 years ago, I met B.B. King. He played
at the Cincinnati Zoo back in my native Ohio.
My buddy Pat and I enjoyed a great show. Pat
snapped photos throughout, and after the encore,
I suggested that we hang around and try to figure
out where King would be holding court afterward.
After avoiding security for a few minutes, we saw a
couple folks ushered into a backstage door. So, we
followed them with a we-belong-here look on our
faces.
Sure enough. There was the big man
himself at the end of a small receiving line. When
it was our turn, we shook hands, spoke briefly, got
autographs and went to pose for a photo. That’s
when Pat cursed, looked up from his camera and
announced. “You’re gonna kill me, Rog, but I’m out
of film!”
The first B.B. King show I attended was
a year or two before that – on my birthday – at
Memorial Hall in Dayton, Ohio. The opener was
a pre-comeback Buddy Guy, which I thought
was pretty awesome since the elder bluesman
had been an early influence on the younger. The
King and his protege both kicked butt, and I still
have the show poster somewhere. I saw B.B. a
few times in the ‘90s and early 2000s. Slowly, he
began to sit longer and play a little less at each
show until finally he played the entire show sitting
down and spent a notable amount of time talking
and letting the band play. Performing some 300
gigs a year took its toll.
When I moved to Mississippi, not only
did I get to see King play his yearly Indianola
homecomings, but I also got to see first hand the
land and the culture that gave rise to such blues
greats as Charley Patton, Muddy Waters, and B.B.
King. For those of you who have been here, you
know. The place and the history explain the men
and the music. A night in a Delta juke joint and a
day at one of our blues museums truly tells the
story behind the old 78s and scratchy LPs.
A MUSEUM FIT FOR A KING
A couple years back, Indianola, Mississippi,
opened the doors to its amazing $15,000,000
B.B. King Museum. Just before the official grand
opening, I took 80-something-year-old Big George
Brock through the facility – as workers finished
moving artifacts into place and carpenters’ saws
buzzed in the background. Mississippi-born Brock
grew up in the same way as King – working a
cotton plantation in the segregated Mississippi
Delta. As Brock walked through the new museum,
he kept pointing at photos of one-room school
houses, juke joints and cotton fields, saying, “Yup.
That’s just how it was.”
Blues Music Magazine 51
 Brock also told me about one day in the
mid-1940s, when he drove a truckload of cotton One of my Cat Head store customers, Don
choppers from Flower’s Plantation to the tiny Gentry, remembered a less dangerous story about
nearby town of Dublin, Mississippi, for lunch. As King. He said that in the late 1960s King opened
he pulled up, there was King (just 6 years his for Kenny Rogers & the First Edition at Ole Miss
elder) sitting out front playing for tips. “The next in Oxford, Mississippi. Every time King tried to end
time I heard him, he was talking about, ‘Peptikon his show and leave the stage, the students would
sure is good’, on the radio in Memphis!” Brock carry him back on for one more song. Gentry said
saw King from time to time through the decades whenever he brings up the memory with his friends
that followed, and who were there, they usually
about two years forget that Rogers even
ago (some 60 played.
years later), he Even the self-proclaimed
opened up a show “Ladies’ Man” of Greenville,
for his old friend Mississippi, James
in St. Louis. He “T-Model” Ford, once
got to spend a few shared a B.B. King memory
minutes with King with me. The supremely
backstage before confident octogenarian said,
the show. They “I played in Australia with
laughed about the B.B. King. I like to have took
old days. Brock his show. I got to whooping
called me the day that guitar. B.B. King quit
after King passed, playing!” (In reality, King
commenting about probably decided that Ford’s
how few of his old alternately-tuned guitar and
blues friends are elastic timing were best
left. left to play with just the
Another drummer!) B.B. PASSES
Magnolia State PHOTOGRAPHY © ROGER STOLLE THE TORCH
bluesman, Mark
“Mule Man” Massey, shared this memory with me: One final anecdote comes from Clarksdale,
“I played for B.B. King with a stripe on my leg [at Mississippi, blues prodigy,16-year-old Christone
infamous Parchman Farm]. Then, I met B.B. five “Kingfish” Ingram. Ingram and the Delta Blues
years after I was released, and I said, ‘Do you Museum’s student band met King on his tour bus
remember coming to Parchman prison?’ He said, in Indianola two years ago. “He said his band was
‘Yeah.’ ‘Well, I was one of the guys in Parchman on the way to play Carnegie Hall one time and got
when you came there. You’d just got your new lost. They stopped and asked a wino how to get to
black bus. You got out with a hoe and held up Carnegie Hall. The wino said, ‘Practice!’ [King] just
the light lines, so the bus could get through, and wanted to make impression on us, and tell us we
I was thinking, oh man, B.B. King’s fixing to get need to practice.”
electrocuted!’ ‘Yeah, I remember.’ I said, ‘We Farewell to one of history’s great musical
couldn’t meet you, but you signed a picture and icons, and an unwavering ambassador for blues
sent it over to us.’“ The respect in Massey’s voice music and state of Mississippi. B.B. King. R.I.P.
said it all.
52 Blues Music Magazine
I’m probably the thousandth writer to make a We were on some shows where they sang the
complimentary pun out of B.B. King’s biggest same song together, and it was Blues singing as
hit song, but I’m also probably the hundred good as it gets. B.B. really helped everyone on
thousandth guitar player to use B.B.’s finger- the sad occasion of Muddy’s funeral in ’83. It was
shaking trill to make a guitar note sing instead of a comfort to see B. when Mud was put into the
just shout. ground.
I don’t remember a time when B.B. I remember taking the opportunity to
wasn’t “King of the Blues.” He was completely see all of B.B.’s performances when both bands
established at the top before I even heard any were on a week-long Jazz festival in Nice, France
blues. I remember one summer. I was
going to see him at basically trying to learn
the newer version as much as I could
of The Boston Tea about his touch from
Party in 1970 or watching him play –
so. I was not only concentrating on his
taken and shaken right (picking) hand to
by B.B.’s music, learn more about what
but was absolutely gave B.B. his instantly-
amazed that a identifiable sound
man his age could on the guitar, along
actually pick up a with his more obvious
guitar and perform trademark finger trill.
so strongly in his In about early
mid-40’s! ’74, I was playing with
Whether Muddy at the Cellar
out of generosity Door in D.C. I had
or boredom, B.B. spent the day listening
asked if there were to B.B.’s songs from
any guitar players the ‘50s on cassette,
in the house who and I really had him
would like to join on my mind and in my
him on-stage and PHOTOGRAPHY © BOB MARGOLIN ear. On Muddy’s songs
play Lucille, his that night, where it
guitar. I did, and played my best, really thrilled was appropriate, I’m sure B.B.’s licks popped
and appreciating the experience fully at the time. out of my guitar. In the dark balcony there was
Of course, musically, I was a baby, but it was the an enthusiastic customer whose voice sounded
first time I played on-stage with a famous blues familiar, and it turned out to be B.B. himself. He
musician. I guess I started at the top. At another hung out with Muddy and the band after the show,
of B.B.’s Tea Party gigs, I remember seeing telling road stories. I said to him, “I bet you can tell
Rod Stewart lurking in the back of the club, just who I was listening to today,” and he smiled.
enjoying B.B.’s show. In ’75, Muddy played at a blues festival in
I joined Muddy Waters’ band in August, Peoria that seemed to have just about everybody
1973. The week I joined Muddy’s band, B.B. had on it. Luther Allison performed a tribute to B.B.
an outdoor concert in Boston canceled because of – three or four of B.B.’s signature songs in the
rain, and came down to Muddy’s gig at Paul’s Mall middle of his set.
and sat in. Blues Music Magazine 53
Luther did not realize that B.B. was on the show,
but B.B. arrived right while Luther was doing his
songs. When he left the stage, Luther found B.B.
waiting in the wings, laughing, “Now what am I
going to play?” Luther was embarrassed, but B.B.
was very nice to him.
In ’87, I added on to my friends The
Nighthawks, and we opened for B.B. in Roanoke,
Virginia. B.B. was so nice, so giving, that he
actually visited our dressing room to say hello and
thank us for being on the show with him. In ’94, I
was working with The Muddy Waters Tribute Band
and we opened on B.B.’s annual summer tour.
One of my best friends, spectacular guitarist Tom
Principato, was living in Austin then and came
to the show. He knew B.B. was celebrating a
birthday and he had made a video tape of old B.B.
performances, and other music films he thought
B.B. would enjoy, for a birthday present. Tom
asked me to try to get it to B.B. Even though I was
on the show, I know how tight concert security can
be and I respect a performer’s privacy. Backstage,
I ran into B.B.’s friendly, talented percussionist,
Tony Coleman, and asked him if there was a way
to get Tom’s videotape present to B.B. He told me
it would be no problem to give it to B.B. personally
and brought me into B.B.’s dressing room. B.B.
was touched by Tom’s present, and after chatting
for a few minutes, I stood up to leave. B.B. looked
up at me from his chair, and with the sweetness of
a polite child who is not used to generosity but gets
a surprise treat, said softly, “Thanks again for my
present.” No, Mr. King, thank you!
Recently, there was still something in
B.B.’s show that chilled me: B.B. sings “Key To The
Highway,” and when he gets to the line “I’m going
to roam this highway, ‘til the day I die,” he adds, in
a spoken-word aside, “I’m going to stay out here ‘til
I die,” or something close to that. Perhaps he’s just
being dramatic on-stage, but I get the feeling that
he means exactly that.
I thank B.B. King for all he’s done, and
every night I play I thank him with my guitar. As
with his friend Muddy Waters, we will miss the man
but his blues will live on, a touchstone for all who
love music, and the thrill will never be gone.
– Bob Margolin
54 Blues Music Magazine
 B.B. King
B.B. King Anthology
Universal Music
Leon Russell and Joe Walsh join King on Russell’s
In September,
“Hummingbird,” while Carole King plays electric
2005, B.B. King
piano on “Chains And Things.”
turns 80 years
The second record begins with King from
young and is
1971 and has numerous friends joining. Musicians
celebrating in fine
like Klaus Voorman, Ringo Starr, Dr. John, and Jim
fashion. There
Gordon join King on “Ghetto Woman.” Dr. John
is the B. B. King
and Fathead Newman play behind King on “There
Birthday tour
Must Be A Better World Somewhere.” Then Jesse
around the country, a new biography with our own
Ed Davis and Joe Walsh help King on “I Got Some
Charles Sawyer and Dick Waterman helping B.B.,
Help I Don’t Need.” Even Stevie Wonder adds
and a birthday anthology released by Universal
keyboards on two tunes from 1973. On “Let The
Music. This B.B. King Anthology is a three-disc set.
Good Times Roll” from 1976, James Toney, who
The first two discs contain 34 King classics while
plays organ, is the first member of King’s current
disc three is the DVD of King’s Blues Summit, a
band to show up. No King anthology would be
weekend show recorded with 11 blues luminaries
complete without his brilliant 1987 collaboration
as King’s guests at King’s Memphis blues club on
with U2 on “When Love Comes To Town.” The
Beale in 1993.
record fittingly ends with “I’ll Survive,” King’s
The music starts a dozen years into King’s
personal message of endurance.
career. “How Blue Can You Get,” recorded in 1963
By including King’s Blues Summit DVD
is still a staple of King’s live nights. From there,
as part of the package, Universal Music has taken
disc one covers “Sneakin’ Around” and “Help The
King’s birthday celebration over the top. In 1993,
Poor,” both of which are crafted like the songs Ray
King brought blues greats to Memphis as a musical
Charles was doing at that time. By song six, King
summit. the eleven musical cuts are interspersed
is back to the blues with “Everyday I Have The
with B.B. talking about the part Memphis and
Blues” and “Sweet Little Angel” from his landmark
Beale played in his life in music. Blues guitar
Live At The Regal record. Guaranteed that once
giants like Robert Cray, Joe Louis Walker, Buddy
you hear these cuts, Live At The Regal will be on
Guy and Albert Collins join King in guitar battles
your must buy list. That one night in November,
while singers Ruth Brown, Koko Taylor, and
1964, continues to be an outstanding example of
Irma Thomas sing the old man verses woman
King’s chitlin’ circuit appeal. Other live cuts include
debate common to the blues. The songs covered
“Gambler’s Blues” and Sweet Sixteen,” parts one
here include “Stormy Monday,” “Taint Nobody’s
and two, recorded in Chicago in 1965, and “Please
Business,” “The Thrill Is Gone,” “Sweet Home
Accept My Love” recorded at the Village Gate in
Chicago,” and “Kansas City.” King ends his night
NYC in 1969. You’ll also find King’s signature hit,
out with an all-out jam on “The Blues Is Alright,”
“The Thrill Is Gone,” here. That song in 1969 was
and his “Tribute To Miles, Stevie Ray & Albert.”
King’s official entry into mainstream white radio
Believe me that if you can’t get to see King
and clubs. “Paying The Cost To Be The Boss,”
on his Birthday tour, this Anthology is the next best
“Lucille,” and Nobody Loves Me But My Mother” all
thing.
have a youthful King delivering his blue message
– Art Tipaldi
with his powerful tenor and answering by his
shaking his trademark guitar vibrato on Lucille’s
strings.

Blues Music Magazine 55

 B.B. KING
Deuces Wild
MCA
He turned 72
in September
and released
Deuces Wild, his
75th album, in
November. Where
his previous release called for a summit meeting of
some of the blues’ greatest living players, Deuces
widens the musical guest list to include some of
B.B.’s upper echelon music friends. If you’re B.B.
King and you build it, the musicians will come.
The artists MCA assembled chose either from
a list of songs previously recorded by King or
other tunes that could showcase King’s satin on
sandpaper vocals and trademark guitar vibrato.
B.B. was present and playin’ with each artist on
all the sessions but Joe Cocker’s. Add to that the
production value of John Porter’s knowledge of
what makes King’s sound work on disc, and you
have some of the most relaxed and yet musically
challenging King sessions ever.
Van Morrison opens the party with his own
“If You Love Me.” The bittersweet vocal caress
Morrison employs is emotionally satisfying that this
is the only tune on the disc King doesn’t offer any
vocal counterpoint. Instead, King supplies some
of his most compelling solos above Phil Marshall’s
warm string arrangements. Tracy Chapman next
trucks her signature vocal trills on the big one, “The
Thrill Is Gone.” It’s refreshing to hear this chestnut
of the blues canon played with a freshness derived
from either the inventive vocal point of view with
a woman answering B.B.’s inflexible stance or the
edge from Lucille.
Then King and Eric Clapton deshuffle
“Rock Me Baby” and institute a funkifed reggae
beat. Slow and ponderous, it gives these long time
friends ample elbowroom to jam guitar vitality into
the smallest of spaces to fill. B.B.’s favorite blues
lady Bonnie Raitt choose the Areatha Frankin tune,
“ Baby, I Love You,” to stretch out on. The groove
is pure Muscle Shoals, greasy slide, fat back beat,
piano and organ.
When the grand old men of rock, the
Rolling Stones, play with the Boss, it’s only fitting
56 Blues Music Magazine
they selected “Playing The Cost To Be The Boss”
to rock out on. Picture the King squinched face, fist
pounding into open hand, Mick’s hips ‘n lips, and
Keith’s cigarette in the headstock. The guitar solos
move in a 12 bar friendly head cutting. First King’s
huge Gibson’s tone, then Richards’ typically nervy
low slung Strat, then Ron Woods’ more polished
assualt and then Mick’s dirty harmonica. Is that
enough for ya!
Dr. John and King casts an upbeat New
Orleans spell on Doc Pomus’ “There Must Be
A Better World Somewhere.” There’s also a
wonderful duet with Mick Hucknall of Simply Red
on the Percy Mayfield classic, “Please Send Me
Someone To Love.” Joe Cocker and B. duet on
Keb’ Mo’s “Dangerous Mood.” David Gilmour
and the King swing on “Crying Won’t Help You.”
Country guitarist Marty Stuart joins King on
“Confessin’ The Blues.” Stuart is more part of
the alternative country scene that freely mixes
traditional and contemporary aspects of that genre.
The guitar duel reels in this Nashville meets
Memphis slugfest.
Hey, what’s this, M.C. B.B. rappin’ with the
Grandmasta Heavy D, chillin’ with his homeys in
da hood, dissin’ all them others but his squeeze
Lucille. Definitely fun stuff especially when B.B.
asks Heavy D to hold his hand walkin’ through da
hood.
Since the mid-60’s, every King
performance has included Willie Nelson’s “Night
Life.” The musical conversation between these
musical road warriors clearly illustrates how
opposites can be compatible in music. King’s
muscular guitar tone and churchy voice balances
Nelson’s violin-like guitar and reedy laments. A
beautiful way to close out the set.
After touring for over 45 years, perhaps
near 15,000 performances, garnering awards from
all corners of the musical world, most recently the
Blues Foundation’s Lifetime Achievement Award
in 1997, and penning his autobiography, King
certainly could sit and rest with a “been there, done
that” recording attitude. Instead, like the musical
genius he is, B.B. King still pushes to create fresh
musical concepts.
– Art Tipaldi
 B.B. King
One Kind Favor
Geffen

This B.B. King record King’s 7+ minute funeral march of Johnson’s

took top honors as “Backwater Blues” reminds of every destructive
Contemporary Blues Mississippi flood from 1927 to Katrina. King and
Album in the 2009 Dr. John end the record with “Tomorrow Night,”
Grammy Awards. Johnson’s tear jerking ballad of a one nighter
Produced by T-bone looking for forever.
Burnett, One Kind Favor focuses on the traditional In between, King covers John Lee
blues that B.B. King heard in the 1940’s growing Hooker’s “Blues Before Sunrise,” Howlin’ Wolf’s
up in Indianola, MS, and later in the early 1950’s “How Many More Years,” and two from the
on Beale Street. Instead of the Las Vegas, “You Mississippi Sheiks, one of the major string bands
Are My Sunshine,” supper club King, we get King’s from the 1930’s, including their biggest hit, “Sitting
deepest blues emanating from the taproot of his On Top Of the World.”
soul. The voice, at 84 years old, still booms from The list of musicians accompanying King
the bottom. And Lucille accentuates everything include Jim Keltner and Johnny Lee Shell on
King feels. guitars, Nathan East, borrowed from EC’s band,
Read any King biography or watch a King Stephen Bruton, and a massive horn section which
DVD and you’ll hear him lovingly revere the names answers every King and Lucille call. Though the
Blind Lemon, T-Bone, and Lonnie Johnson. The songs are mostly mid-tempo, the delivery drips
record starts with Blind Lemon’s elegant, “See That emotion and reverence. There is considerable joy
My Grave Is Kept Clean,” a song King and every in hearing B.B. play these timeless blues through
other African American in the south grew up with. his life’s experiences and make old and scratchy
Burnett swirls Dr. John’s bright piano, Neil Larsen’s 78s his own blues statement.
B-3, and the muscular acoustic bass of Nathan – Art Tipaldi
East with King’s timeless reading of Jefferson’s
poetry. A waterfall of King’s signature thick vibrato
on Lucille leads the charge on “I Get So Weary,”
a song that King heard T-Bone Walker deliver in
the 1940’s. On “Get These Blues Off Me,” a song
written by T-Bone’s wife, King’s thundering voice
and stylish runs up and down Lucille’s neck have
the same crossover appeal that King discovered
on “The Thrill Is Gone.” If you love when B. B.
sings slow blues, this is the song to replay over
and over. King continues his T-Bone Fest with
“Waiting For Your Call,” reminiscent of King’s
“I’ll Survive.” His thunderous voice and vigorous
guitar slow dances with Dr. John’s lush piano. But
the young King also held Lonnie Johnson in high
regard. Johnson was one of the classy 1920’s
guitarists who effortlessly mixed blues and jazz
styles. Like Walker, a perfect mentor for King to
study. Here, King reprises three Johnson tunes.
“My Love Is Down” is given standard Lucille
treatment.

Blues Music Magazine 57

 B.B. KING
Original Greatest Hits
Virgin/EMI
B.B. KING & FRIENDS
80
Geffen/UMe
Even the pieces included that didn’t
necessarily make it to the charts or with fans
Hard to believe that at the time, for example, the novelty instrumental
B.B. King turned “Mashed Potato Twist” or “I’ll Survive,” are here for
80 on September good reason. All 40 tracks stand every test that a
16, 2005. half-century of time can throw at them, and they
Octogenarians are still merit absolute attention today. They capture
supposed to be resting, not on the road 150 nights the young B.B. when no other bluesman could play
a year, recording new albums, showing up on the with such precision or sing with such an evocative,
tube as a spokesperson, and, in Riley B. King’s transcendent voice.
case, still pursuing a career that began when Fifty-plus career years on, B.B.’s voice
World War II was still a fresh scar in the American warbles a bit and he plays his guitar Lucille sitting
psyche. down, but there is much to like on his new Geffen/
That B.B. is still out there playing well is
all to his credit. That the Geffen/UMe, Virgin/EMI
and the unhyphenated Ace labels released B.B.
King packages the week of his birthday is no doubt
a credit to their event-oriented marketing teams.
The Geffen/UMe disc offers new recordings, while
the Virgin/EMI and Ace collections go back to his
reputation-establishing days at the old Modern
label. The Ace compilers have come up with some
interesting rarities in its single-disc release, but
Virgin/EMI has the real red beans & rice stuff on its
double-CD set—the performances that make B.B.
King the last undisputed king of the blues.
Virgin/EMI’s Original Greatest Hits offers
40 early career gems recorded in the 1950s and
very early 1960s. They appeared on the Bihari
brothers’ Modern imprint and its associated RPM,
Crown, and Kent labels. The tracks are sequenced UMe collection, B.B. King & Friends: 80.
in chronological order until the end of the second This is not one of those albums where a famous-
disc, where, in an odd shift, the compilers place his but-frail musician is propped up by guests for one
debut single of “Miss Martha King” and “When Your last “product” release.
Baby Packs Up and Goes” for the Bullet imprint in Instead, 80 catches a robust-sounding
1949. King performing with, in alphabetical order, Bobby
This eccentricity aside, this set has just “Blue” Bland, Eric Clapton, Sheryl Crow, Roger
about every track that a basic B.B. King collection Daltrey, Gloria Estefan, Glenn Frey, Billy Gibbons,
should contain. The No. 1 chart hits are here: “3 Daryl Hall, Elton John, Mark Knopfler, John Mayer
O’Clock Blues,” “You Know I Love You,” “Please and Van Morrison. He’s done a “duets” disc
Love Me,” and “You Upset Me, Baby,” as well as before, Deuces Wild in 1997, but 80 is the stronger
such near misses as the No. 2 “Sweet Sixteen, collection.
Part 1,” the No. 3s “Bad Luck” and “On My Word The game plan for 80 seems to have been
of Honor,” and the No. 8 tune that so inspired to mix songs from his illustrious past with new
Fleetwood Mac’s Peter Green, “When My Heart
Beats Like a Hammer.”
58 Blues Music Magazine
material, in a seven-to-five split, and to record
them in studios where famous friends could duck in
and join him. Sessions took place in London (with
Clapton, Daltrey, Knopfler, Morrison), New York
(Estefan, Hall, Mayer) and Los Angeles (Bland,
Crow, Frey, Gibbons), as well as a live-on-stage
session at Caesar’s Palace Showroom in Las
Vegas (John).
The remarkable thing is that nearly every
track hits the mark, starting with the opening
version of Sonny Boy Williamson I’s “Early in the
Morning,” featuring King and Morrison on vocals
(and Van on harmonica) and ending with the live
workout between B.B. and Elton John on Jimmy
Rogers’ “Rock This House.”
In between King and his old Beale Street
friend Bobby Bland sing a soothing “Funny How
Time Slips Away,” Clapton shows up for a guitar
exchange on a new version of “The Thrill Is
Gone,” a soulful Daryl Hall trades vocals on Jerry
Ragovoy’s “Ain’t Nobody Home,” and young John
Mayer, who recently announced that he’s forsaken
pop for blues, joins B.B. on a cover of Leon
Russell’s “Hummingbird.”
But arguably the strongest track is a gritty
face-off between Roger Daltrey of The Who and
King on the Stix Hooper-Will Jennings tune “Never
Make Your Move Too Soon.” Without the credits
you’d never know it’s the voice that sang the line
about “Hope I Die Before I Get Old” all those years
ago. Age also becomes Daltrey.
The other possibly odd-seeming pairing
with Gloria Estefan also turns out to be a knockout.
They perform a nearly seven-minute take of the
Doc Pomus-Dr. John song “Must Be a Better World
Somewhere.” In fact, the only collaboration that
duds out is with Sheryl Crow, who is fast becoming
one of those people famous for simply being
famous. B.B., meanwhile, remains the king of the
blues for all the right reasons.
– Bill Wasserzieher

Blues Music Magazine 5 9

 B.B. KING
The Life Of Riley
MVDvisual 2014 DVD

“Sincere, honest, true, for real, genuine. If you He explains how his signature vibrato was born
have those five things, then you can play the through his frustrations of trying to emulate White’s
blues.” Carlos Santana. vibrating slide on strings. After eight months, King
Within the first three minutes, Santana returned to his tractor-driving job.
accurately and succinctly describes the life and After he paid off his debts, he returned to
music of B.B. King. Follow that with testimonials Memphis for good. Bobby “Blue” Bland and Rufus
by Bonnie Raitt, John Mayall, Walter Trout, Joe Thomas share Beale street stories, and King tells
Bonamassa, and of his jobs and radio
Eric Clapton, and show at WDIA. His
The Life Of Riley earliest recordings,
kicks off with all the “Miss Martha King” and
power of a one-note “Three O’Clock Blues,”
lick on Lucille. From and his baptizing Lucille
there, Jon Brewer’s were the start of his
documentary, early-1950’s popularity.
narrated by At the one-hour
Morgan Freeman, mark, Buddy Guy,
traces the rise of Derek Trucks, Dr. John,
and subsequent Bono, Robert Cray,
worldwide notoriety Walter Trout, Robert
that B.B. King has Lockwood, jr. Jonny
amassed throughout Lang, and Susan
his glorious lifetime. Tedeschi all explain
The first 15 the gifts King was born
minutes trace King’s with. Later, Billy Boy
early life in and Arnold, Ronnie Wood,
around Indianola, Mick Taylor, Kenny
Mississippi. Sitting Wayne Shepherd,
on his bus or in his Doyle Bramhall II,
Las Vegas house, Joe Bonamassa,
he reminisces about Paul Rodgers, Carlos
his parents, his Santana, and Peter
music, his school Green, all offer praise
years, his Sunday’s his 1964 Live At The
in the church, Regal recording
sharecropping, His second wife,
segregation, and Sue Carol Hall, tells of
the earliest music he heard. Standing on a plowed the tumultuous life married from 1958 to the early
cotton field, King also gives insight into the 1960s to a musician who was logging 320+ nights
backbreaking labor of a sharecropper. a year. Sid Seidenberg tells of charting a more
At the 30-minute mark, King heads off to lucrative course in the 1960s; British invasion
Memphis, only to fail in that first trip at establishing luminaries tell of his influence in England in the
his musical mark. It was there, however, King 1950s and 1960s; King lovingly tells of his standing
sat with his cousin Bukka White and absorbed ovations at his first Fillmore West gig in 1967 when
essential musical lessons. he performed on a bill with Moby Grape and Steve
60 Blues Music Magazine Miller.
 By shifting from all-black audiences on the
chitlin’ circuit to playing for white college kids With King’s passing, this DVD docu-
on rock circuit, King took the blues to the whole biography offers King’s longtime fans and friends
world. Once there, “The Thrill Is Gone” only another chance to celebrate the 65+ years of his
cemented his global status. enormous gifts we were blessed to have. For
Decades later, Bono recounts the new fans, this DVD will throw open the curtain of
experience of writing “When Love Comes To discovery.
Town,” complete with detailed explanations – Art Tipaldi
of composing
and filmed
performances
broadcasting
King to worldwide
audiences. When
Bono was showing
B.B. the charts,
King countered to
him, “Gentlemen, I
don’t do chords. I
do this.”
The final 20
minutes chronicle
his Riding With
The King album
with Eric Clapton,
musical tributes
from his peers,
snippets of his
yearly homecoming
concerts in
Indianola, and a brief introduction to his
museum, which opened in 2008 in Indianola.
Throughout the two-hours, B.B. himself
tell his life stories. Most are well-known and
oft-repeated. But here, they are augmented
with his recordings, archival photos, or filmed
performances. Throughout his stories, told on
buses, in hotel or backstage rooms, or at his
home, we can see the aging of King. From
a 70-something King with President Clinton
to an 87-year-old King singing “Sweet Home
Chicago” with President Obama in 2012, one
can clearly see the physical effects, but the
voice and guitar originality still come through PHOTOGRAPHY © JERRY MORAN
as powerfully as ever.
Blues Music Magazine 61
 Photographer Joseph A. Rosen

62 Blues Music Magazine

Photographer Pertti Nurmi

Blues Music Magazine 63

 Photographer Jerry Moran

64 Blues Music Magazine

Photographer Marilyn Stringer

Blues Music Magazine 65

 Photographer David Horwitz

66 Blues Music Magazine

Photographer Bob Sekinger

Blues Music Magazine 67

 Photographer Scott Allen - Jen Taylor

68 Blues Music Magazine

Photographer Scott Saltzman

Blues Music Magazine 69


Just one note and you knew it was B.B. King,
we all agree. My one last note is sincere
thanks to everyone who contributed to this
Tribute to the King, without you sharing your
stories, photographs, time, and energy it
would not have been possible. It truly is an
incredible read. As it was coming together
the emotions ran like a rollercoaster, from
outright belly laughs, to get me another box
of tissues, please. The
stories and photos portray
a life well lived by a man
who would never admit to
being our King. This was
truly an honor to work
on and special thanks to
Editor-In-Chief Art Tipaldi
who in April 2015 said, “I
don’t really want to add to
your workload but could
we…”
My B.B. King story:
It was the summer
of 1969, and my sixteenth
birthday was approaching,
This was a time of hot
sunny days, and fearful
nights. Living on the
streets of New York City at any age is
challenging, but as a mere five foot seven,
140 pound blond haired, blue eyed kid, for
me it was life threatening scary. After the last
run-in with my father, those cold mean streets
seemed a safer haven then home. An older
friend had an extra ticket to see a show in the
city (Manhattan) featuring a musician named
B. B. King.
70 Blues Music Magazine
With no job, no money, a free ticket, and
a friend to hang with late into the dark and
lonely night, it wouldn’t have mattered who
was playing, I’m in! On the subway ride,
to the show that night my friend told me I
had something in common with B.B. King.
He explained about B.B.’s mother and
grandmother passing and his being on his
own so young. I remember him telling me
not to worry because B.B. turned out alright.
The show was at the
Avery Fisher Hall in
Lincoln Center, it seemed
enormous, very bright,
and really clean. The
music was incredible, it
was as if B.B. was talking
directly to me. He had
a hard time in his life
and yet he seemed so
happy. This man sang
about sadness, but yet
he lifted my spirit and
instilled a sense of hope.
The band members and
B.B. hung around and
shook everyone’s hand,
including mine! Later
that night on the rooftop
where I lived in the
Bronx, I found a renewed sense of purpose.
If B.B. could overcome his hard times, then
so could this skinny little kid. I’ve had the
pleasure of watching B.B. King perform 21
times, and meeting him twice. His music,
personality, and commitment to his craft
inspired me to do better then, and continues
to this day. May God Bless You B.B. King, I
still owe you one and always will…
- Jack Sullivan
Blues Music Magazine 71