I had just finished reading his book Blues All Around Me: The Autobiography of B.B. King when he died. I never heard of him before but after reading the book, I could so easily understand the throb of pain and reaction in the media caused by his passing. He wasn't an articulate man. Rather, he was quiet and as a child, he had a stutter and was painfully shy. Music unlocked his soul and gave him expression. For a man who wasn't articulate, he painted beautiful imagery in his autobiography with his simple sentences:
"Great Grandma spoke with quiet authority. She'd put me on her lap and, up close, I'd notice wrinkles around her mouth and over her lips. Her eyes would twinkle and her voice was steady. I believed her every word. Unlike some of the men, she didn't exaggerate or fib to build herself up. She was sincere. She told me a story about Houston, Mississippi, where a black boy fell in love with the master's daughter. When the moon was slim and the night was dark, they'd meet undercover and steal a kiss..."He grew up milking cows, driving tractors, picking cotton and at night or on free weekends he would walk several miles to town with his guitar and strum a bit, picking up coins on the corners of sidewalks, and then walking back home the several miles late at night to save those coins. Though tired, he had a smile on his face and energy to continue the manual labor because his soul was fed with the music he created and shared.
In school in those few years when he attended, he learned of Booker T. Washington, Frederick Douglass, Mary McLeod Bethune, and how hard work, tenacity, and faith were the keys to accomplishment. He following the fights of Joe Louis like he was fighting for the Black's freedom. But his bigger heroes were the musicians that his Aunt Mima had on records. Men like Blind Lemon Johnson who sang "Rabbit Foot Blues", "Shuckin' Sugar Blues" and "That Crawlin' Baby Blues" and "Mosquito Moon". But while Blind Lemon was raw, Lonnie Johnson was gentle and had a dreamy quality of singing and a lyrical way with the guitar. Blues were about feeling, and these two guitarists were the ones who hit young Riley, latter B.B., hard.
Riley moved to Arkansas because the picking of cotton paid better, $1 per one-hundred pounds versus the 35¢ he got in Mississippi. So after madly picking cotton from early morning to about noon, he would wait around WDIA had see if he could substitute for Maurice "Hot Rod" Hulbert, a deejay with a program called Sepia Swing Club. He was getting his plucking fingers in the door of blues music. It was rough but he had passion for the picking' - the picking' of the guitar, not so much of the cotton, but a man did what a man had to do, and he was a workaholic anyway. So by 4pm he'd be back in the field for another couple of hours picking that cotton and dreaming of picking his guitar for wider and larger audiences. It was at the WDIA that he got his nickname Beale Street Blues Boy shortened to B.B. although for a time he had the longer shortening of Blues Boy.
Well, B.B. also had a name for his guitar - she was curvy and sexy and the passion of his life. The name came about while he was pickin' in a club one night and the club caught on fire. No way was he leaving without his precious guitar that he had saved and saved for, so fighting his way through the blazes, he grabbed his guitar and barely escaped the building, cradling his guitar in his arms. He was burned on his legs but his guitar was fine, so he caught his breath and thanked the Lord. Then overhearing a patron say, "Damn, you wouldn't think two guys would kill each other over a gal like Lucille" and B.B. realized the blaze was from a fight over a woman he never met, but it was a memorable night, a memorable name, and right then and there he christened his guitar Lucille. He liked seeing his guitar as a woman, as someone worth fighting for and even dying for. Over the years he's had seventeen guitars, but all of them have been named Lucille.
In 1952, when B.B. was 26, his "Three O'clock Blues" reached and remained #1 on the Billboard's rhythm and blues chat for three months. This breakthrough changed his life. He didn't become rich and he didn't become famous, but in the world of black music, he became a national name, and just like that, his territory spread beyond Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas and Alabama. He states very clearly that he was listened to by blacks and not selling to whites, that wouldn't happen until some 20 years later, but he was now on the slow ladder climb to nationwide fame.
Blues is typically associated with drugs and B.B. did some experimenting too, but after one naive sexy evening with a hot woman who gave him drugs, he bumped into Tiny Kennedy, a pal who set him straight by yelling at him "You the damnedest fool I ever did see. That shit will kill you. And if it don't kill you, it'll turn you into a raggedy-ass junkie like her. You better check your rings and watch ..." B.B. did and sure enough the hot, sexy junkie girl had stolen his goods. He never did drugs again, and if he found out guys in his band were using dope, he'd fire 'em on the spot.
That didn't stop him from having more hot and sexy nights with hot and sexy women. He slept his way across the country, before he was married, when he was married, afterwards, between marriages, and to his knowledge he fathered 15 children, all of whom he acknowledged and all of whom he gave allowances to of some kind. He says he was like a foreigner to his children with his life on the road, but he still had the best of intentions and he still sent money to support them, something he could do because he loved to work.
He loved women of all kinds -- sweet women, women with compassion and inner beauty -- but one time when he had a hard time dealing with a woman was when the new trend in the hippie movement was to send a naked young lady to attend to him, not to offer sex but to welcome him, sort of in the spirit of the flower children. Well, it was Georgia and the lady was young, nubile and white. He wanted to accept the gesture and show his appreciation but he couldn't figure out quite how, and he also just wanted to stare, but then that would be rude and show just how nervous he was. Well, he got through the experience but he could hear the men around him laughing.
He grew in the world of black music and whites started listened, reinterpreting the blues and expanding on his style. B.B. believed in always doing his best, always evolving his style, and he was known for his workaholic passion for sharing his interpretation of the blues. In his early 70s, he was included in The Ed Sullivan Show, and through that experience he got on The Tonight Show. And in these later years, he finally reached worldwide acceptance. There are franchised B.B. King nightclubs in Memphis, L.A., Nashville and Orlando. Gibson started a line of B.B. King guitar strings made of Swedish steel. There are B.B. King casual clothing and B.B. King food products (B.B. King barbecue sauce, B.B. King salad dressing, B.B. King salsa and B.B. King bean spreads). There was even discussion of B.B. King catfish although ironically by that time B.B. had already been a vegetarian for 10 years after watching a TV show on the slaughter of chickens and cows.
With international acceptance came social invitations. B.B. was invited for the first time to the White House by President Bush, and he received the Presidential Medal of the Arts, one of the highest awards the US can bestow on a private citizen. He ate lunch with Vice President Quayle and the presidents in both Turkey and Latvia, because as they said, they wanted to get to know B.B. And Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip of England invited him to a garden party being thrown in Washington D.C. He even took his band to Beijing, China where he opened the Hard Rock Cafe.
The little boy Riley who lost his beloved mother and grandmother at a very early age and struggled to live, having little to no time or interest in book learning, became a household icon and monument in the world of music. He wrote his poignant autobiography humbly, sharing his foibles and weaknesses much more easily than tooting his horn on his many successes. But his sharing made the reader realize that his life was a struggle, not one he was ashamed of but one that he embraced so that his utmost purpose of "feel the music" and share what he felt could be achieved. He wasn't a businessman; he was an extreme artist, placing value on the intrinsic rather than the material gain.
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