What was missing from their calculations was the willingness to believe that B.B. King had become a true hero of the American public. To publishers B.B. was merely the best artist from a musical genre they had relegated to the margins of pop music culture. A few publishers declared firmly that they understood the paramount importance of blues to our musical heritage and B.B.'s place in that context, but did not believe that these facts translated into ringing bookstore cash registers. These few who grasped B.B.'s historic importance rated the market for a book on Eric Clapton to be worth hundreds of thousands of sales, but believed that a book on B.B. King would sell too few copies to pay for its printing costs. The life story of the white superstar was a guaranteed success but the life of the black master from whom he had learned a substantial part of his craft was only grist for the ghostwriter's mill which would be ground down to a page or two in the bestseller about his white disciple.
Matters stand differently now.
Today, because of the great stature B.B. has attained in the meantime, publishers would vie for the right to offer the book, if it were unpublished. Except for the brief few years during the mid 1970's when he experimented with self-management, his popularity has risen steadily from the time of his arrival in 1968 through today, and continues to rise. This feat should not be taken for granted, for 1980 might as easily have been the zenith of B.B.'s rise. Instead of continuing toward the stratosphere of superstars he might have slid into obscurity and become the marginal figure that publishers in the 1970's were so sure would be his fate. The history of popular culture is littered with stories of brilliant artists like Little Willie John, the inspiration of James Brown, who burned brilliantly and then burned out, or curiosities like Tiny Tim, who held the American public in rapt fascination for one television season with his strange persona, quavering soprano voice, and furtive ukulele strumming, only to slip into an oblivion so complete that today, walking through an airport terminal, he can't even draw a second look.