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B.B. King: West Memphis
built 117 days ago
After serving briefly in the army, King moved in with his cousin Booker (Bukka) White... a blues guitarist. King's attempts to copy Bukka's playing helped him develop his own style. He sought out Sonny Boy Williamson, who had a radio show on WDIA in West Memphis, and asked to play a song for him. Williamson was so impressed with King that he offered King his own radio show and a chance to play regularly at Miss Annie's 16th Street Grill. King was able to advertise his upcoming concerts on the radio, and soon he and his trio had become popular. Known on the radio as the "Beale Street Blues Boy," which was shortened to "Bee-Bee," and then to his famous initials, King decided he wanted to make records.
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When Riley B. King first arrived in Memphis in the summer on 1946, he searched on Beale Street for his cousin Bukka White. After looking for Bukka for a few days, Riley finally found him and Bukka took young Riley in. For the next ten months, Bukka schooled Riley in the art of the blues. Although Riley and Bukka jammed together in private, they never played in public. Riley’s talents were improving and he profited from impromptu jam sessions with other blues musicians he had met in and around the Memphis area. Bukka had prepared Riley for his life as a bluesman by teaching him everything from how to hold his guitar to phrasing lyrics. Bukka’s most important trait which he impressed upon Riley was his durability, and without it, B.B.
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Riley B. King was born on September 16, 1925 on a cotton plantation in Itta Bene, Mississippi, just outside the Mississippi Delta town of Indianola. In his youth, he played on the corner of Church and Second Street for dimes and would sometimes play in as many as four towns on a Saturday night. In 1947, with his guitar and $2.50, he hitchhiked north to Memphis, Tennessee, to pursue his musical career. Memphis was the city where key musicians of the South gravitated and which supported a large, competitive musical community where virtually every black musical style was heard. B.B. stayed with his cousin Bukka White, one of the most renowned rural blues performers of his time, who schooled B.B.
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In 1962 King moved from local record companies in Memphis to nationally prominent label, ABC Records. By 1968 he had connected with a growing revival of blues music in the United States and he ... began to reach popular, rock, and soul music audiences, finding a large white following for the first time. Rock musicians including Eric Clapton and Mick Jagger credit King as a major influence on their musical styles. The song “The Thrill Is Gone” gave King his biggest hit on the mainstream popular music charts and in 1970 won him his first Grammy Award. The following year Live in Cook County Jail became his best-selling album and identified him with the cause of prisoners’ rights.
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After realizing that his group did not share his motivation, King set out on his own to Memphis in 1946 in the hopes of establishing a music career. Once there, he moved in with his cousin Bukka White and began privately honing his skills as a blues guitarist. A return to Indianola was made the following year to pay off his debts, but by the end of 1948 he was back in Memphis performing on the newly-created all-black radio station WDIA. It was at this time that Riley became Beale Street Blues Boy, gradually shortened to just Blues Boy and then B. B. These radio appearances led to his first recording sessions, made with the Bullet Recording and Transcription Company in 1949, and later to a 10-year contract with Modern Records.
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Over the last decade, King has continued to record quality albums. He’s collaborated with Eric Clapton (Riding with the King in 2000) and a host of other big names (B.B. King and Friends: 80 in 2005), recorded a record-full of tunes by jump blues bandleader Louis Jordan (Let the Good Times Roll in 1999) and fronted a large orchestra on his most recent studio release (Reflections in 2003). King’s new album/DVD combo, due out later this month on Geffen/UME, is another in a slew of live recordings, this one simply titled Live! The record was recorded last October at blues clubs in Nashville and Memphis.
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