A Rockapaedia Obituary
B.B.King
B.B.King died aged eighty-nine on 14th May 2015 in Las Vegad, Nevada, U.S.A. The autopsy revealed B.B.King's death was due to complications of Alzheimer's disease and congestive heart failure.
On 27th of May 2015, B.B.King's body was flown to Memphis and the funeral procession led down Beale Street, with a brass band marching in front of the hearse, playing "When the Saints Go Marching In", as mourners called out "BB". Rodd Bland, son of the late blues singer Bobby "Blue" Bland, carried the latest iteration of B.B.King's famous guitar "Lucille." Thousands lined the streets to pay their last respects. His body was then driven down Route 61 to his hometown of Indianola, Mississippi.
On May 29th 2015, B.B.King's body was laid out in a purple satin vest and a floral tuxedo jacket over a white tuxedo shirt and flanked by two black Gibson guitars, at the B.B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center, in Indianola. Fans lined up to view his open casket.
On May 30th 2015, B.B.King's funeral was held at the Bell Grove Missionary Baptist Church in Indianola, Mississippi. He was buried at the B.B. King Museum.
B.B.King was born Riley Ben King on September 16th 1925 on a cotton plantation called Berclair, near the town of Itta Bena, Mississippi, the son of sharecroppers Albert and Nora Ella King. He considered the nearby city of Indianola, Mississippi to be his home. When B.B.King was four years old, his mother left his father for another man, so he was raised by his maternal grandmother, Elnora Farr, in Kilmichael, Mississippi.
While young, B.B.King sang in the gospel choir at Elkhorn Baptist Church in Kilmichael. B.B.King was attracted to the Pentecostal Church of God in Christ because of its music. The local minister led worship with a Sears Roebuck Silvertone guitar. The minister taught B.B.King his first three chords. It seems that at the age of twelve he purchased his first guitar for fifteen dollars although another source indicates he was given his first guitar by Bukka White, his mother's first cousin.
In November 1941 "King Biscuit Time" first aired, broadcasting on KFFA in Helena, Arkansas. It was a radio show featuring the Mississippi Delta blues. B.B.King listened to it while on break at a plantation. A self-taught guitarist, he then wanted to become a radio musician.
In 1943, B.B.King left Kilmichael to work as a tractor driver and play guitar with the Famous St. John's Quartet of Inverness, Mississippi, performing at area churches and on WGRM in Greenwood, Mississippi.
In 1946, B.B.King followed Bukka White to Memphis, Tennessee. White took him in for the next ten months. However, B.B.King returned to Mississippi shortly afterward, where he decided to prepare himself better for the next visit, and returned to West Memphis, Arkansas, two years later in 1948. He performed on Sonny Boy Williamson's radio program on KWEM in West Memphis, where he began to develop an audience. B.B.King's appearances led to steady engagements at the Sixteenth Avenue Grill in West Memphis and later to a ten-minute spot on the Memphis radio station WDIA. The radio spot became so popular that it was expanded and became the Sepia Swing Club.
Initially B.B.King worked at WDIA as a singer and disc jockey, gaining the nickname "Beale Street Blues Boy", which was later shortened to "Blues Boy" and finally to B.B. It was there that he first met T-Bone Walker. B.B.King said, "Once I'd heard him for the first time, I knew I'd have to have an electric guitar myself.
In 1949, B.B.King began recording songs under contract with Los Angeles-based RPM Records. Many of B.B.King's early recordings were produced by Sam Phillips, who later founded Sun Records. Before his RPM contract, B.B.King had debuted on Bullet Records by issuing the single "Miss Martha King" (1949), which did not chart well. "My very first recordings, in 1949, were for a company out of Nashville called Bullet, the Bullet Record Transcription company," B.B.King recalled. "I had horns that very first session. I had Phineas Newborn on piano; his father played drums, and his brother, Calvin, played guitar with me. I had Tuff Green on bass, Ben Branch on tenor sax, his brother, Thomas Branch, on trumpet, and a lady trombone player. The Newborn family were the house band at the famous Plantation Inn in West Memphis."
B.B.King assembled his own band; the B.B. King Review, under the leadership of Millard Lee. The band initially consisted of Calvin Owens and Kenneth Sands (trumpet), Lawrence Burdin (alto saxophone), George Coleman (tenor saxophone), Floyd Newman (baritone saxophone), Millard Lee (piano), George Joyner (bass) and Earl Forest and Ted Curry (drums). Onzie Horne was a trained musician elicited as an arranger to assist B.B.King with his compositions. By his own admission, B.B.King could not play chords well and always relied on improvisation.
B.B.King's recording contract was followed by tours across the United States, with performances in major theaters in cities such as Washington, D.C., Chicago, Los Angeles, Detroit, and St. Louis, as well as numerous gigs in small clubs and juke joints of the southern United States. During one show in Twist, Arkansas, a brawl broke out between two men and caused a fire. He evacuated along with the rest of the crowd but went back to retrieve his guitar. He said he later found out that the two men were fighting over a woman named Lucille. He named the guitar Lucille, as a reminder not to fight over women or run into any more burning buildings.
Following his first Billboard Rhythm and Blues chart number one, "3 O'Clock Blues" (February 1952), B.B. King became one of the most important names in R&B music in the 1950s, amassing an impressive list of hits including "You Know I Love You", "Woke Up This Morning", "Please Love Me", "When My Heart Beats like a Hammer", "Whole Lotta Love", "You Upset Me Baby", "Every Day I Have the Blues", "Sneakin' Around", "Ten Long Years", "Bad Luck", "Sweet Little Angel", "On My Word of Honor", and "Please Accept My Love". This led to a significant increase in his weekly earnings with appearances at major venues such as the Howard Theater in Washington and the Apollo in New York, as well as touring the entire "Chitlin' circuit". 1956 became a record-breaking year, with 342 concerts booked and three recording sessions. That same year he founded his own record label, Blues Boys Kingdom, with headquarters at Beale Street in Memphis. There, among other projects, he produced artists such as Millard Lee and Levi Seabury. In 1962, B.B.King signed to ABC-Paramount Records, which was later absorbed into MCA Records, and which itself was later absorbed into Geffen Records. In November 1964, B.B.King recorded the Live at the Regal album at the Regal Theater. B.B.King later said that Regal Live "is considered by some the best recording I've ever had . . . that particular day in Chicago everything came together . . ."
From the late 1960s, new manager Sid Seidenberg pushed B.B.King into a different type of venue as blues-rock performers like Eric Clapton, once a member of The Yardbirds as well as Cream, and Paul Butterfield were popularizing an appreciation of blues music among white audiences.
B.B.King gained further visibility among rock audiences as an opening act on the Rolling Stones' 1969 American Tour. He won a 1970 Grammy Award for the song "The Thrill Is Gone"; his version became a hit on both the pop and R&B charts. It also gained the number 183 spot in Rolling Stone magazine's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
B.B.King was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1980, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987, and the Official Rhythm & Blues Music Hall of Fame in 2014. In 2004, he was awarded the international Polar Music Prize, given to artists "in recognition of exceptional achievements in the creation and advancement of music."
From the 1980's to his death in 2015, B.B.King maintained a highly visible and active career, appearing on numerous television shows and performing 300 nights a year. In 1988, B.B.King reached a new generation of fans with the single "When Love Comes to Town", a collaborative effort between King and the Irish band U2 on their Rattle and Hum album. In December 1997, he performed in the Vatican's fifth annual Christmas concert and presented his trademark guitar "Lucille" to Pope John Paul II. In 1998, he appeared in The Blues Brothers 2000, playing the part of the lead singer of the Louisiana Gator Boys, along with Eric Clapton, Dr. John, Koko Taylor and Bo Diddley. In 2000, B.B.King and Clapton teamed up again to record Riding With the King, which won a Grammy Award for Best Traditional Blues Album.
Discussing where he took the Blues, from "dirt floor, smoke in the air" joints to grand concert halls, B.B.King said the Blues belonged everywhere beautiful music belonged. He successfully worked both sides of the commercial divide, with sophisticated recordings and "raw, raucous" live performance.
In 2006, B.B.King went on a "farewell" world tour, although he remained active afterward during the last years of his life. The tour was partly supported by Northern Irish guitarist Gary Moore, with whom B.B.King had previously toured and recorded, including the song "Since I Met You Baby". It started in the United Kingdom, and continued with performances in the Montreux Jazz Festival and in Zürich at the Blues at Sunset. During his show in Montreux at the Stravinski Hall he jammed with Joe Sample, Randy Crawford, David Sanborn, Gladys Knight, Leela James, Andre Beeka, Earl Thomas, Stanley Clarke, John McLaughlin, Barbara Hendricks and George Duke.
In June 2006, B.B.King was present at a memorial of his first radio broadcast at the Three Deuces Building in Greenwood, Mississippi, where an official marker of the Mississippi Blues Trail was erected. The same month, a groundbreaking was held for a new museum, dedicated to B.B.King, in Indianola, Mississippi. The B.B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center opened on September 13, 2008.
In late October 2006, B.B.King recorded a concert album and video entitled 'B.B. King: Live at his B.B. King Blues Clubs in Nashville and Memphis'. The four-night production featured his regular B.B. King Blues Band and captured his show as he performed it nightly around the world. Released in 2008, it was his first live performance recording in over a decade.
In 2007, B.B.King played at Eric Clapton's second Crossroads Guitar Festival and contributed the songs "Goin' Home", to Goin' Home: A Tribute to Fats Domino.
In the summer of 2008, B.B.King played at the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival in Manchester, Tennessee, where he was given a key to the city. Also in 2008, he was inducted into the Hollywood Bowl Hall of Fame.
B.B.King performed at the Mawazine festival in Rabat, Morocco, on May 27th 2010. In June 2010, B.B.King performed at the Crossroads Guitar Festival with Robert Cray, Jimmie Vaughan, and Eric Clapton. He also contributed to Cyndi Lauper's album Memphis Blues, which was released on June 22nd 2010.
In 2011, B.B.King played at the Glastonbury Music Festival UK and in the Royal Albert Hall in London, where he recorded a concert video.
Rolling Stone ranked B.B.King at number 6 on its 2011 list of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time.
On February 21st 2012, B.B.King was among the performers of "In Performance at the White House: Red, White and Blues", during which President Barack Obama sang part of "Sweet Home Chicago". B.B.King recorded for the debut album of rapper and producer Big K.R.I.T., who also hails from Mississippi. On July 5th 2012, B.B.King performed a concert at the Byblos International Festival in Lebanon.
On October 3rd 2014, after completing his live performance at the House of Blues in Chicago, a doctor diagnosed B.B.King with dehydration and exhaustion, and the eight remaining shows of his ongoing tour had to be cancelled. B.B.King didn't schedule any additional shows for the remainder of the year.
In 1991, Beale Street developer John Elkington recruited B.B. King to Memphis to open the original B.B. King's Blues Club, and in 1994, a second club was launched at Universal Citywalk in Los Angeles. A third club in New York City's Times Square opened in June 2000. Two further clubs opened at Foxwoods Casino in Connecticut in January 2002 and another in Nashville in 2003. Another club opened in Orlando in 2007. A club in West Palm Beach opened in the fall of 2009 and an additional one, based in the Mirage Hotel, Las Vegas, opened in the winter of 2009.
B.B.King made guest appearances in numerous popular television shows. In 2000, the children's show 'Between The Lions' featured a singing character named "B.B. the King Of Beasts", modeled on the real B.B.King.
A feature documentary about B.B.King narrated by Morgan Freeman and directed by Jon Brewer was released on October 15th 2012.
B.B.King, who was diabetic, appeared in several television commercials for OneTouch Ultra, a blood glucose monitoring device, in the 2000s and early 2010s. He appeared in a 2014 commercial for the Toyota Camry with his guitar Lucille.
B.B.King was married twice, to Martha Lee Denton, November 1946 to 1952, and to Sue Carol Hall, 1958 to 1966. The failure of both marriages has been attributed to the heavy demands made on the marriage by B.B.King's 250 performances a year. It is reported that he fathered 15 children with several different women. B.B.King was also diagnosed with type 2 diabetes in 1990. He lived with diabetes for over 20 years and was a high-profile spokesman in the fight against the dis
ease, appearing in advertisements for diabetes-management products along with American Idol season nine contestant Crystal Bowersox.
B.B.King King was an FAA certified private pilot and learned to fly in 1963 at what was then Chicago Hammond Airport in Lansing, Illinois. He frequently flew to gigs but in 1995 his insurance company and manager asked him to fly only with another certified pilot. As a result, he stopped flying around the age of 70.
B.B.King's favorite singer was Frank Sinatra. In his autobiography he spoke about how he was a "Sinatra nut" and how he went to bed every night listening to Sinatra's classic album 'In the Wee Small Hours'. During the 1960's Sinatra had arranged for B.B.King to play at the main clubs in Las Vegas. He credited Sinatra for opening doors to black entertainers who were not given the chance to play in "white-dominated" venues.
In September 1970, B.B.King recorded 'Live in Cook County Jail', during a time in which issues of race and class in the prison system were prominent in politics. B.B.King also co-founded the Foundation for the Advancement of Inmate Rehabilitation and Recreation, tying in his support for prisoners and interest in prison reform. In addition to prison reform, B.B.King also wanted to utilize prison performances as a way to preserve music and songs in a similar way that Alan Lomax did.
In 2002, B.B.King signed on as an official supporter of Little Kids Rock, a nonprofit organization that provides free musical instruments and instruction to children in underprivileged public schools throughout the United States. He sat on the organization's Honorary Board of Directors.
In the 2000's to early 2010s, B.B.King was involved in the spread of awareness of diabetes since his diagnosis in 1990. He was also involved in a diabetes awareness campaign with American Idol contestant, Crystal Bowersox, with One Touch Ultra, starring in commercials and spreading awareness about diabetes and promoting diabetes health management.
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song: 'Three O'clock Blues' by B.B.King