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Portrait of B. B. King

Popular music · Jazz & blues

B. B. King

1925–2015 · American

Electric blues; the King of the Blues

Riley B. King, known as B.B. and billed as the King of the Blues, built a style on stinging single notes and a shimmering left-hand vibrato, never playing a chord and never singing while he played. He named every guitar Lucille, toured relentlessly for six decades, and won fifteen competitive Grammy Awards.

How to spot them

  • ▸Every guitar called Lucille — usually a black Gibson semi-acoustic with no f-holes
  • ▸Single-string phrasing with a fluttering 'butterfly' vibrato; he never plays chords, and never sings and plays at once
  • ▸The billing 'King of the Blues'; the initials come from 'Beale Street Blues Boy' on Memphis radio
  • ▸A workload of 200–300 concerts a year into his eighties
  • ▸Born on a Mississippi Delta plantation; a museum in Indianola, where he is buried

Songs & albums

A 1951 rhythm and blues chart-topper, his first, adapted from a Lowell Fulson song set in the small hours (1951)

'Three O'Clock Blues' — it spent five weeks at number one on the R&B chart.

A 1955 Memphis Slim lament that sorrow never takes a morning off, used for years as his show opener (1955)

'Every Day I Have the Blues', a Memphis Slim song he made his own.

A 1965 concert album taped at a South Side Chicago theatre, routinely named the greatest live blues record (1965)

Live at the Regal — the record other guitarists tell you to start with.

A 1969 crossover hit in which the singer tells a departing lover the excitement has left and he is free (1969)

'The Thrill Is Gone', a Roy Hawkins song given a string arrangement; it won his first Grammy.

A 1988 duet with an Irish rock band on their album of American roots music and live recordings (1988)

'When Love Comes to Town', written for him by U2 for Rattle and Hum.

A 2000 duet album with an English guitarist, its title casting him as royalty in the passenger seat (2000)

Riding with the King, with Eric Clapton; it won a Grammy and sold over two million copies.

Quick-fire facts

  • •Born Riley B. King in 1925 near Itta Bena, Mississippi, and raised picking cotton around Indianola
  • •He worked as a disc jockey on WDIA in Memphis, billed as the Beale Street Blues Boy; this was shortened to Blues Boy and then to B.B.
  • •Lucille was named after a 1949 dance hall fire in Twist, Arkansas: two men fighting over a woman called Lucille knocked over a kerosene stove, and King ran back into the burning building for his guitar
  • •Gibson produced a signature Lucille model from 1980, a semi-acoustic with the f-holes closed to reduce feedback
  • •He played 342 concerts in 1956, and was still touring in his late eighties
  • •He won fifteen competitive Grammy Awards, plus a Lifetime Achievement Award in 1987
  • •He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987, inducted by Sting
  • •He received the Kennedy Center Honors in 1995, the National Medal of Arts in 1990 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2006
  • •He died in Las Vegas on 14 May 2015, aged 89, and is buried at the B.B. King Museum in Indianola, Mississippi

Drill it — 8 cards

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Sources