B.B King
B.B. King (1925-2015) was a guitarist, singer, and songwriter, one of the leading representatives of American blues.
B.B. King (1925-2015), stage name of Riley Ben King, was born in Itta Bena, on the outskirts of Indianola, Mississippi, on September 16, 1925. At the age of nine, he experienced poverty firsthand when he picked cotton to support himself. He became intimately familiar with racism when he served in the Army during World War II and discovered that soldiers, his compatriots, preferred to sit next to a German prisoner rather than stand next to him.
In 1940 he bought his first guitar. Self-taught, he never studied music. He was a cousin of guitarist Bukka White, from whom he received support. In 1947, at age 22, he moved to Memphis, where he began playing on street corners in exchange for a few coins. In 1949 he was hired as a radio DJ, when he adopted the stage name B.B. King (the initials stand for Blues Boy).
In 1950 he released his first national hit, "Three O'Clock Blues," and performed in small cafes, dive bars, dance halls, jazz clubs, and rock clubs. He began touring non-stop. In 1956, along with his band, King performed 342 shows. Also in the 1950s, he was playing in a bar in Arkansas when a man set the place on fire because of a woman named Lucille. The musician braved the flames, saved his guitar—which he named after the woman who caused the fight.
In the 1960s, when blues was rejected by politically active Black teenagers for representing "music from the times of slavery," B.B. King was well-received by rock audiences, who have revered him ever since. In 1969, he was chosen to open for 18 Rolling Stones shows.
B.B. King created his own style and claimed he could make one note worth a thousand. His style influenced guitarists such as Eric Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and George Harrison. He was considered to blues what Louis Armstrong was to jazz and Ray Charles to soul music.
Throughout his career he received 16 Grammy Awards, recorded more than 50 albums, with songs that marked an era, including: "Three o'clock blues", "The Thrill is gone", "When Love comes to town", "Paying the cost to be the boss", "How blue can you get", "Everyday I have the blues", "You don't know me", "Please love me" and "You upset me baby".
B.B. King married twice and had fifteen children with fifteen women. In his performances in recent years, King played sitting down due to health problems resulting from diabetes, a disease he lived with for over twenty years.
B.B. King passed away in Las Vegas, Nevada, United States, on May 14, 2015.
B.B King - Futpediamusic Selection
B.B King
Futpediamusic Selection
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