B.B. King (1925-2015) was a guitarist, singer, and songwriter, one of the leading representatives of American blues.
B.B. King, stage name of Riley Ben King, was born in Itta Bena, near Indianola, a town in Mississippi, United States, on September 16, 1925. He experienced racism firsthand when he served in the Army during World War II and discovered that soldiers, his fellow countrymen, preferred to sit next to a German prisoner rather than next to him.
In 1940, he bought his first guitar. Self-taught, he never studied music. At 22, he moved to Memphis, where
he began playing on street corners in exchange for some coins. At 24, he was hired as a DJ at a radio station, where 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 cafés, dives, dance halls, jazz and rock clubs. Still in the 50s, he was playing in a bar in Arkansas when a man set the place on fire over a woman named Lucille. The musician faced the flames and saved his guitar – which he named after the girl who caused the fight.
In the 60s, when blues was rejected by politically aware black teenagers for representing “music from the times of slavery,” B.B. King was well received by the rock audience,
who since then revered him. In 1969, he was chosen to open 18 shows for the Rolling Stones.
B.B. King created his own style and claimed he could make one note worth a thousand. His style influenced guitarists like Eric Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and George Harrison. He was considered for blues what Louis Armstrong represented for jazz and Ray Charles for soul music.
Throughout his career, he received 16 Grammy Awards, recorded over 50 albums, with songs that marked the era, including: “Three o’clock blues,” “The Thrill is gone,” “When Love comes to town,” “How blue can you get,” “Everyday I have the blues,” “You don’t know me,” “Please love me,” among others. In his performances in recent years, King played sitting down due to health issues stemming from diabetes, a disease he lived with for over twenty years.
B.B. King passed away in Las Vegas, United States, on May 14, 2015.