The thrill is gone: Blues legend B.B. King dead at 89 | Fox News The thrill is gone: Blues legend B.B. King dead at 89 Published May 15, 2015 Facebook 0 Twitter 0 livefyre Email Print B.B. King, the legendary blues singer, songwriter, and guitarist, died Thursday in Las Vegas. He was 89 years old. Attorney Brent Bryson told The Associated Press that King died peacefully in his sleep at 9:40 p.m. local time at his home, where he had been in hospice care. Bryson added that funeral arrangements were being made. Although King had continued to perform well into his 80s, the 15-time Grammy winner suffered from diabetes and had been in declining health during the past year. He collapsed during a concert in Chicago last October, later blaming dehydration and exhaustion. For most of a career spanning nearly 70 years, Riley B. King was not only the undisputed king of the blues but a mentor to scores of guitarists, who included Eric Clapton, Otis Rush, Buddy Guy, Jimi Hendrix, John Mayall and Keith Richards.

He recorded more than 50 albums and toured the world well into his 80s, often performing 250 or more concerts a year. King played a Gibson guitar he affectionately called Lucille with a style that included beautifully crafted single-string runs punctuated by loud chords, subtle vibratos and bent notes. More On This... B.B. King dead at 89 The result could bring chills to an audience, no more so than when King used it to full effect on his signature song, "The Thrill is Gone." He would make his guitar shout and cry in anguish as he told the tale of forsaken love, then end with a guttural shouting of the final lines: "Now that it's all over, all I can do is wish you well." His style was unusual. King didn't like to sing and play at the same time, so he developed a call-and-response between him and Lucille. "Sometimes I just think that there are more things to be said, to make the audience understand what I'm trying to do more," King told The Associated Press in 2006. "When I'm singing, I don't want you to just hear the melody.

I want you to relive the story, because most of the songs have pretty good storytelling." A preacher uncle taught him to play, and he honed his technique in abject poverty in the Mississippi Delta, the birthplace of the blues. "I've always tried to defend the idea that the blues doesn't have to be sung by a person who comes from Mississippi, as I did," he said in the 1988 book "Off the Record: An Oral History of Popular Music." "People all over the world have problems," he said. "And as long as people have problems, the blues can never die." Fellow travelers who took King up on that theory included Clapton, the British-born blues-rocker who collaborated with him on "Riding With the King," a best-seller that won a Grammy in 2000 for best traditional blues album. Still, the Delta's influence was undeniable. King began picking cotton on tenant farms around Indianola, Mississippi, before he was a teenager, being paid as little as 35 cents for every 100 pounds, and was still working off sharecropping debts after he got out of the Army during World War Two.

"He goes back far enough to remember the sound of field hollers and the cornerstone blues figures, like Charley Patton and Robert Johnson," ZZ Top guitarist Billy Gibbons once told Rolling Stone magazine. King got his start in radio with a gospel quartet in Mississippi, but soon moved to Memphis, Tennessee, where a job as a disc jockey at WDIA gave him access to a wide range of recordings. He studied the great blues and jazz guitarists, including Django Reinhardt and T-Bone Walker, and played live music a few minutes each day as the "Beale Street Blues Boy," later shortened to B.B. Through his broadcasts and live performances, he quickly built up a following in the black community, and recorded his first R&B hit, "Three O'Clock Blues," in 1951. He began to break through to white audiences, particularly young rock fans, in the 1960s with albums like "Live at the Regal," which would later be declared a historic sound recording worthy of preservation by the Library of Congress' National Recording Registry. He further expanded his audience with a 1968 appearance at the Newport Folk Festival and when he opened shows for the Rolling Stones in 1969.

King was inducted into the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame in 1984, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987 and received the Songwriters Hall of Fame Lifetime Achievement Award in 1990. He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President George W. Bush, gave a guitar to Pope John Paul II and had President Barack Obama sing along to his "Sweet Home Chicago." Other Grammys included best male rhythm `n' blues performance in 1971 for "The Thrill Is Gone," best ethnic or traditional recording in 1982 for "There Must Be a Better World Somewhere" and best traditional blues recording or album several times. His final Grammy came in 2009 for best blues album for "One Kind Favor." Through it all, King modestly insisted he was simply maintaining a tradition. "I'm just one who carried the baton because it was started long before me," he told the AP in 2008. Born Riley B. King on Sept. 16, 1925, on a tenant farm near Itta Bena, Mississippi, King was raised by his grandmother after his parents separated and his mother died.

He worked as a sharecropper for five years in Kilmichael, an even smaller town, until his father found him and took him back to Indianola. "I was a regular hand when I was 7. I picked cotton. I drove tractors. Children grew up not thinking that this is what they must do. We thought this was the thing to do to help your family," he said. When the weather was bad and he couldn't work in the cotton fields, he walked 10 miles to a one-room school before dropping out in the 10th grade. After he broke through as a musician, it appeared King might never stop performing. When he wasn't recording, he toured the world relentlessly, playing 342 one-nighters in 1956. In 1989, he spent 300 days on the road. After he turned 80, he vowed he would cut back, and he did, somewhat, to about 100 shows a year. He had 15 biological and adopted children. Family members say 11 survive. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Advertisement B.B. King B.B. King Blues Musician B.B.

King was a well-known blues singer, songwriter and guitarist. His career spanned almost seven decades, starting in 1949 with RPM Records. His first hit, “Three O’Clock Blues,” debuted in 1952. It was the start of many more to come. In addition to his raspy, soulful voice, King was known for donning his signature Gibson guitar, which he called Lucille. He became famous for developing a call-and-response routine where he would talk to his guitar like it was a woman. Throughout his career, he won 15 Grammys and was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1980 and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987. King died peacefully in his Las Vegas home on May 14, 2015, at the age of 89. B. B. King Biography - life, children, parents, name, history, mother, young, old, information, born, time B. B. King Biography Itta Bena, Mississippi African American singer, musician, and songwriter B. B. King is one of the most successful artists in the history of blues music.

Today his ability as a blues guitarist remains unmatched. Early years Riley B. King was born on September 16, 1925, between Itta Bena and Indianola, Mississippi. His parents split up when he was a small child, and he lived for a few years with his mother in the Mississippi hills. She died when he was nine, and he was alone until his father, Albert King, found him a few years later. Working on a cotton plantation in Indianola, he earned $22.50 a week. "I guess the earliest sound of blues that I can remember was in the fields while people would be pickin' cotton or choppin' or somethin'." King noted in a 1988 Living Blues interview cited in Contemporary Musicians. "When I sing and play now I can hear those same sounds that I used to hear then as a kid." King sang gospel music in church and even performed professionally with the Famous St. John Gospel Singers, but he was not allowed to sing the blues, which was considered "the devil's music." Still, he listened to recordings by early blues masters, especially Sonny Boy Williamson, on his aunt's record player.

King's farm boss loaned him money to buy a guitar and sign up for music lessons, and King quickly developed as a blues player. Soon he was earning more singing and playing guitar on street corners on Saturday than he made all week on the plantation. King left Mississippi for Memphis, Tennessee, which promised the excitement and musical atmosphere he dreamed of. He settled there for good in 1948. "Beale Street Blues Boy" After serving briefly in the army, King moved in with his cousin Booker (Bukka) White, also 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.

King was signed to Bullet Records and in 1949 recorded four songs at the radio station, including "Miss Martha King" and "I've Got the Blues." He also continued to perform in the area. Musician and talent scout Ike Turner (1931–) connected King with the Kent/Modern B. B. King. AP/Wide World Photos . /RPM record label, and King's King's 1951 single for his new label, "Three O'Clock Blues," became a hit. He scored several other hits during these years, and by the mid-1950s he was playing about three hundred shows a year. He would maintain this schedule for over twenty years. Once when King was playing at a dance in Twist, Arkansas, two men got into a fight and knocked over a heater, starting a fire that spread through the dancehall. King escaped the burning building, then remembered his sixty-dollar guitar and ran back in, nearly dying in an attempt to rescue it.

When he discovered that the men who had started the blaze were fighting over a woman named Lucille, he gave the name to his guitar—"to remind myself never to do anything that foolish." Appreciated by rock audiences Although King distanced himself from rock and roll when the new style emerged in the 1950s, he soon began to add some of the traits of early rockers like Little Richard (1932–) and Fats Domino (1928–) to his act. In 1962 he moved to the ABC label, and in 1965 he put out his first album, Live at the Regal. In 1968, after the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968), King played an all-night blues benefit with fellow guitarists Jimi Hendrix (1942–1970) and Buddy Guy (1936–) to raise money for King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

During the late 1960s, praise for King from English rock musicians such as Eric Clapton (1945–) and Jimmy Page (1944–) led to renewed interest in the blues among U.S. audiences. King found himself playing concerts with bands such as Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, and Santana. As African American audiences moved away from the blues, King began to attract young white listeners. In 1969 "The Thrill Is Gone" was released; the song won a Grammy in 1971 and became King's biggest hit. In 1971, with attorney F. Lee Bailey (1933–), King founded FAIRR (the Foundation for the Advancement of Inmate Rehabilitation and Recreation), an organization dedicated to the improvement of prison conditions. King often gave concerts in prisons, one of which was recorded and released as Live at San Quentin. A blues legend By the 1980s King was recognized as a blues legend.

He won a 1984 Grammy for best traditional blues recording for Blues n' Jazz; he appeared on the album Rattle and Hum with the Irish rock band U2; and he received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 1988 Grammy awards ceremony. In the early 1990s King was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, received a Presidential Medal of Freedom from George Bush (1924–), and even earned a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame. Live at San Quentin, released in 1990, earned him another Grammy. He was also the owner of B. B. King's Blues Club and Restaurant on Beale Street in Memphis. King has been married and divorced twice. He has fifteen children and has often expressed regret that his heavy touring schedule prevented him from being around to see them grow up. He was faced with a heartbreaking situation in 1992 when he played at a jail in Gainesville, Florida; among the inmates there was his daughter Patty, who was serving time on drug charges. By the time he reached his late sixties, King had slowed down his performance schedule somewhat, though he still toured regularly.

In 1994 he played a concert at the Hard Rock Café in Beijing, China. He was by now playing Lucille the Fifteenth. "We've spent 40 years together," he said to Ebony. "She likes younger men but puts up with me." In December 1995 King received the 18th annual Kennedy Center Honors presented by President Bill Clinton (1946–). King said of the event, "Anytime the most powerful man in the world takes 10 to 15 minutes to sit and talk with me, an old guy from Indianola, Mississippi, that's a memory imprinted in my head which forever will be there." In 2000 King was elected to the Mississippi Musicians Hall of Fame. The same year he received a Heroes Award from the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences. In February 2001 he won another Grammy in the traditional blues album category for Riding with the King, which he recorded with Eric Clapton. For More Information Danchin, Sebastian. Blues Boy: The Life and Music of B. B. King. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1998. King, B. B.

Blues All Around Me: The Autobiography of B.B. King. New York: Avon Books, 1996. Rees, Dafydd, and Luke Crampton, eds. Rock Movers and Shakers. New York: Billboard Books, 1991. User Contributions: BB King bb king . american blues musician . b 1925 Riley B. King, one of the greatest, most influential blues guitar stylists, composers and singers of the 20th century was born on a cotton plantation, in Itta Bene, Mississippi, just outside the delta town of Indianola. His parents, Albert and Nora Ella King were hardworking sharecropping farmers, who had lived in Mississippi all their lives. Young Riley was named after his uncle Riley, the brother of Albert, who was no relations to the late great blues player of the same name, who grew up in the same Delta region. Nora left her husband Albert for another man when Riley was 4 years old. Afterwards Riley was sent to live with his maternal grandmother, Elnora Farr, who lived in Kilmicheal, Mississippi. After his parents broke up Riley.

lost contact with his father for a awhile, living between his mother and grandmother, where he stayed most of the time. Young Riley. grew up attending the Elkhorn School, which was right across the road from and affiliated with the Elkhorn Baptist Church. There he met a teacher named Luther Henson, who had a large influence on his young life, teaching him about the greatness of Black people like Booker T. Washington, Mary McLeod Bethune and Frederick Douglas. Mr. Henson taught him that hard work, tenacity and faith were important things to have in his character and young Riley would embrace these values for the rest of his life. But it was in church, in Kilmicheal that he would get his first musical experience. Riley's mother and grandmother were very religious and attended church every Sunday. Riley's mother sang in the choir. But it was the minister of the church, Archie Fair, a very good guitarist in his own right, who became an important musical inspiration for young Riley.

Reverend Fair used music as a tool in his church to bring his congregation together, and because young Riley had developed a good voice by this time he became an important part of the church's musical environment singing in the choir; Reverend Fair would lead the congregation by playing the guitar. Riley also learned to play the guitar from Reverend Fair, who taught him how to play the E, A and B chords. At age seven Young Riley, because of the influence of Reverend Fair wanted to become a guitar playing preacher. But that was not to be, because the blues would soon began to exert an even larger influence over his life. He really began listening to the music at his Great Aunt Mima's house. Aunt Mima was a great music lover and young Riley heard the music of Blind Lemon Jefferson and Lonnie Johnson on records Aunt Mima played on the Victrola at her house. Hearing this music changed Riley's life. The blues were exciting to him, were about emotion, feeling and they held out an offer of hope to him.

Sadly, after Riley's mother died during the summer of 1935 at the young age of 25, when he was nine years old, the blues spoke more directly to his heart. After his mother's death his father, who had then moved to Lexington, Mississippi, wanted him to come and live with him, but Riley, because of his dedication to school and a newly formed gospel singing group decided to stay with his grandmother, Elnora. The singing group, calling itself the Elkhorn Jubilee Singers was made up of Riley's cousin Birkett Davis, and two friends from Elkhorn; Walter Doris, Jr., and Dubois Hane. The group tried to sound like the Golden Gate Quartet but failed. On January 15, 1940, tragedy struck young Riley again. This time his beloved grandmother Elnora died leaving young Riley to fend for himself, again. After Elnora death young Riley continued to live at his grandmother's cabin, where he farmed and raised cotton. It was not enough to sustain him and in the fall of 1940 Riley reluctantly moved to Lexington to live with his father.

After living with his father for two years Riley grew homesick for the Kilmicheal region and moved back there - with his father's blessing - in 1942, when he was 16. Riley continued singing with his old gospel group, attending school and working for the white Flake Cartledge family, who were very supportive of young Riley's efforts. When he was twelve Riley paid $15.00 for his first guitar. By the end of 1942 Riley had decided to move once again, this time to the Delta, to work and form a better singing group; he had out grown Kilmicheal, and during the spring he and his cousin Birkett borrowed a car had moved to Indianola, Mississippi, in the spring of 1943. Soon he had a new job as a tractor driver, a new singing group and a girlfriend. The new group, led by John Matthews had Riley and Birkett in it and was called "The Famous St. John's Gospel Singers." Soon, however, Riley also began singing and playing the blues on Indianola street corners. Blues was becoming increasingly more important to him than was the music he played and sang in church.

He was now looking to his mother's first cousin Bukka White, the famous Memphis blues singer, as an important influence and mentor. ( White used to come and visit Riley's family when he lived in Kilmicheal. ) Very quickly Riley found out he could double and sometimes triple the amount of money he could make playing the blues and he turned away from gospel and spiritual music to the blues. In 1944, on November 11, Riley married his first wife, Martha Denton. one night in May, 1946, after wrecking his boss's tractor, Riley, not wanting to face the white man's anger left Indianola with $2.50 in his pocket. Riley arrived in Memphis, Tennessee during the early summer of 1946 searching for his cousin Bukka White,. hoping the famous blues singer might take him in. After searching Beale Street and everywhere else for a few days Riley finally found White, who took him for the next ten months, teaching him the art of the blues. And though they never played in public they jammed together in private. White also taught Riley how to hold the guitar and how to phrase his lyrics.

But the most important thing that Bukka White taught him was durability and without it he would not be the B.B. King we know today. B.B. King missed his wife and returned to Indianola in 1947 to get her; he and his wife also worked for Johnson Barrett, the man whose tractor he had wrecked and by the end of the crop season in 1948 had earned enough money driving a tractor, loading trucks and playing guitar on street corners to pay off his debt. In late 1948 he and his wife headed back to Memphis, where Riley was determined now to make in the music business, and make it he did. Riley King's first big break came in 1948, in Memphis, when he performed on Sonny Boy Williamson's radio show after playing him one of his songs. Williamson liked it and put the young singer and guitarist on the air. After the radio audience heard Riley they flooded the radio station with calls praise for this unknown singer. This led to Riley performing steady engagements at the Sixteenth Avenue Grill in West Memphis and later to a ten minute radio spot on the Black owned radio station, WDIA.

Soon Riley was the talk of Memphis and needed a more catchy name than Riley for radio broadcasts. When he was just starting out young Riley had nicknamed himself "Blues Boy" King, a moniker shortened now to "B.B.", the name that would stick to him like glue for the rest of his life. In the mid-1950's two men at a performance of B.B.'s got into a fight and knocked over a kerosene stove that set the hall on fire. B.B., like everyone else ran out of the hall to saved their lives. But B.B., realizing he had left his guitar inside ran back to get it, barely escaping with his life. After he found out the fight was over a woman named Lucille he decided to name his guitar after the woman and this name has been the name of every guitar B.B. has played since that night. After his rendition of Lowell Fulson's "Three O clock Blues" became a national hit, in 1952, B.B. and his wife, Martha, after eight years of marriage were divorced. One of the reasons Martha divorced him was because, by now B.B.

was performing an average of 275 one night stands every year, all over the country. Badly hurt by the break-up of his marriage it nevertheless inspired him to write the blues classic; "Woke Up This Morning." By the time B.B. married his second wife, Sue Hall, on June 4, 1958, he had become a major star. But constant travel, the very same thing that had plagued his first marriage, doomed this one also. And so after eight years of marriage Sue and B.B. were divorced in 1966. It was the last time he would marry. Again divorce inspired him to sing a song that would become a hit, this time it would be Roy Hawkins, "The Thrill Is Gone." Although B.B. King was a huge star in the African-American music community by 1965 he was still mostly unknown in the White community. This would change in 1965 when Elektra Records released Paul Butterfield's first Butterfield Blues Band album, featuring the late Mike Bloomfield on guitar.

Bloomfield became a star, almost overnight, and when he was asked where he learned to play the way he did, he replied, "By copying B.B.'s licks." No one knew who "B.B." was. And when they asked, "B.B." who? Bloomfield replied, "The real monster; B.B. King." After this happened B.B. King's popularity soared. In short order "The Thrill Is Gone" became a big hit, he stopped having to play the "chitlin circuit" small town black clubs and started playing larger jazz clubs, dining rooms of luxury resort hotels, college concerts and rock palaces such as Filmore East . In 1969 B.B. made his first appearance on network television on Johnny Carson's the "Tonight Show." In 1971 B.B. sang and played on Ed Sullivan's show. By this time Sidney A. Seidenberg had come on board as B.B.'s new manager, he helped re-negotiate his old recording contracts with ABC/MCA records and got him major new bookings. Since the 1970's B.B. King's career has moved at a rapid pace up hill.

He has recorded over 75 records, has received seven Grammy Awards, including its Lifetime Achievement Award in 1987, has been inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame, 1984, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, 1987, become a Member of the Songwriter's Hall of Fame, 1990, received the Presidential Medal of the Arts, 1990, the Orville H. Gibson Lifetime Achievement Award, 1991, the Kennedy Center Honors, 1995, Presidential Medal of Freedom, American Heritage Fellowship Award by the National Endowment of the Arts, Three NAACP Image Awards, an MTV Video Music Award, 1989/89, a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and many, many more. He has won 22 Downbeat Music Magazine Readers and Critics Poll Awards, 5 Guitar Player Magazine Awards, he has received an Honorary Doctorate of Music from Yale University and fathered 15 children.

He has toured with U2 as the super rock group's opening act and had a song, "When Love Comes to Town, written for him by U2's star, lead singer, Bono. B.B. King still works between 250 and 300 days a year, calling himself a "music workaholic." He lives ( when he takes time to rest ) in Las Vegas, Nevada. and currently plays a Gibson ES-355, a guitar he has been playing for over 25 years. He has played all over the world including Africa, Europe, China, Japan, Australia and New Zealand and is properly referred to everywhere as "The Ambassador of the Blues," a title he so richly deserves. B.B. King has influenced the guitar playing of; Eric Clapton, the late Mike Bloomfield, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Albert Collins, Albert King and Jimi Hendrix. He is one of this country's living, national treasures, a humble but proud, spiritual and beautiful human being, and still "King of the Blues." Quincy Troupe Biography copyright Mason Editions 2000 and Quincy Troupe.

Biography may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the permission of Mason Editions. Discography (Under Construction) Blues legend B.B. King dies at age 89 in Las Vegas - CNN.com Musicians mourn the loss of B.B. King His life was the subject of the documentary "B.B. King: The Life of Riley" and the inspiration for the the B.B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center, which opened in Mississippi in 2008. King's enduring legacy came from his refusal to slow down even after cementing his status as an American music icon. Even with a long list of honors to his name -- a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction, a Presidential Medal of Freedom -- he maintained a relentless touring schedule well into his 80s. Throughout his career, King evolved with the times to incorporate contemporary trends and influences without straying from his Delta blues roots.

Whether he was sharing the stage with U2 on "When Loves Comes to Town" -- a scene memorialized in the 1988 concert film "Rattle and Hum" -- or playing in the East Room of the White House with Buddy Guy, Mick Jagger, Jeff Beck and others, King's single-string guitar notes trilled with an unmistakable vibrato from his hollow-bodied Gibson affectionately known as Lucille. Slowing down King finally started showing signs of his age last year after decades of living with Type II diabetes. JUST WATCHED MUST WATCH Yardbirds guitarist on death of guitar legend B.B. King 02:56 A shaky show in St. Louis prompted his reps to issue an apology for "a performance that did not match Mr. King's usual standard of excellence." He fell ill in October after a show at Chicago's House of Blues due to dehydration and exhaustion, prompting a rare cancellation of the remainder of his tour. He was hospitalized for dehydration in April in Las Vegas, a long way from his modest roots as the son of a sharecropper. King was born on September 16, 1925, on a cotton plantation between Indianola and what is now Itta Bena, Mississippi.

He sang with church choirs as a child and learned basic guitar chords from his uncle, a preacher. In his youth, he played on street corners for dimes, saying he earned more in one night singing on the corner than he did in one week working in the cotton field. Beale Street Blues Boy He enlisted in the Army during World War II but was released because he drove a tractor, an essential homefront occupation. In 1947, he hitchhiked to Memphis, Tennessee, home to a thriving music scene that supported aspiring black performers. He stayed with his cousin Bukka White, one of the most celebrated blues performers of his time, who schooled King further in the art of the blues. King took the Beale Street Blues Boy, or BB for short, as a disc jockey for radio station WDIA-AM Memphis. He got his first big break in 1948 by performing on Sonny Boy Williamson's radio program out of West Memphis, leading to steady engagements at the Sixteenth Avenue Grill in West Memphis and a 10-minute spot on WDIA.

As "King's Spot" grew in popularity on WDIA, King shortened "Beale Street Blues Boy" to "Blues Boy King" and eventually B.B. King. His ascent continued in 1949 with his first recordings, "Miss Martha King/Take a Swing with Me" and "How Do You Feel When Your Baby Packs Up and Goes/I've Got the Blues." His first hit record "Three O'Clock Blues" was released in 1951 and stayed on the top of the charts for four months. God bless BB King peace and love to his family Ringo and Barbarax😎✌️🌟💖 — Ringo Starr (@ringostarrmusic) May 15, 2015 Beloved Lucille It was during this era that King first named his beloved guitar Lucille. In the mid-1950s, King was performing at a dance in Twist, Arkansas, when a few fans became unruly and started a fire. King ran out, forgetting his guitar, and risked his life to go back and get it. He later found out that two men fighting over a woman named Lucille knocked over a kerosene heater that started the fire.

He named the guitar Lucille, "to remind myself never to do anything that foolish." King used various models of Gibson guitars over the years and named them each Lucille. In the 1980s, Gibson officially dropped the model number ES-355 on the guitar King used, and it became a custom-made signature model named Lucille, manufactured exclusively for the "King of the Blues." 30 Grammy nominations In the '50s and '60s, King was a peripatetic figure, idolized by musicians and R&B fans, known for putting on some of the best live shows around. By the late '50s, he was traveling in a chauffeur-driven Cadillac accompanied by a custom Greyhound bus, called Big Red, which housed his band. Even after his bluesier R&B became less commercial -- he observed that "they (once) called guys like me rhythm and blues, so somewhere along the line, I guess I lost my rhythm" -- he still maintained a following, this time among white musicians. Eric Clapton was a fan. Peter Green of Fleetwood Mac modeled his sound on King's. John Lennon said he "wanted to play guitar like B.B.

King." In 1967, his changing fan base was enough to get him booked in San Francisco's Fillmore Auditorium. "We used to play the Fillmore all the time, but it was then about 90% black," he told PBS. "But this time ... it was long-haired white people, men and women, sitting body to body going up to the door. I told my road manager, 'I think they booked us in the wrong place.' " He received a standing ovation. He returned to the Fillmore several more times. In 1970, he won his first Grammy for his trademark song, "The Thrill is Gone." That same year, he debuted an all-blues show at Carnegie Hall and appeared on "The Ed Sullivan Show." Over the years, he racked up 30 Grammy nominations and 15 wins, including two in 2000: one along with Eric Clapton for Best Traditional Blues Album for "Riding with the King" and another with Dr.

John for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals for "Is You Is, or Is You Ain't (My Baby)." His last was in February 2009 for Best Traditional Blues Album for "One Kind Favor" (2008). B.B. King B.B. King Introduction B.B. King is a legendary American Bluesman, gifted guitarist, composer and singer. King has taken part in more than 60 albums, with different artists or on his own. He has won 14 Grammys and received dozens of awards and honors over the years, and he still performs several nights a week. He belongs to the Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame, and stands in the 3rd position of Rolling Stone's "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time". History Early days to Three O'Clock Blues Riley Ben King, known as B.B. King, was born the 16th of September of 1925 in Itta Bena, Mississippi. His father abandoned the family and his mother died when King was just 9 years old, so he spent the rest of his childhood living with his grandmother in Kilmichael, attending school (which he didn't finish), and working at the cotton fields.

When he reached the age of fourteen he got his first guitar, and started singing gospel songs. One year later his grandmother died, and he went to Lexington, to live with his father's new family. Country music, gospel and the rich Mississippi Delta blues heavily influenced his style these early years. Come 1946 he decided to move to Memphis, with his guitar and a couple bucks in his pocket. There he lived with his cousin Bukka White, famous Delta blues singer and guitarist, who taught B.B. King the fine art of playing the blues. Soon he began to work as a DJ in Memphis radio station WDIA, and that's how he got the nickname "Beale Street Blues Boy", which eventually evolved into "Blues Boy" and later the worldwide known "B.B." that has accompanied him for life. In 1949, being 24 years old, King recorded his first four tracks with Bullet Records, and later he signed with RPM records, recording lots of tracks the following two years which eventually led to B.B. King's first top of the charts single "Three O'Clock Blues" in 1951, after which he went on the first of his long, massive tours.

The 50s After his success with "Three O'Clock Blues" B.B. King began to be more and more famous, and he recorded so many tracks that he had to leave from Memphis to L.A. with RPM Records, producing hits such as "You Know I Love You" (1952), "Woke Up This Morning" and "Please Love Me" (1953), "When My Heart Beats like a Hammer," "Whole Lotta' Love," and "You Upset Me Baby" (1954), "Every Day I Have the Blues", the blues ballad "Sneakin' Around," and "Ten Long Years" (1955), "Bad Luck," "Sweet Little Angel", "On My Word of Honor" (1956); and "Please Accept My Love" (1958). In 1953 he moved to Houston where he played with Bill Harvey's band. When Bill had to stop due to helth problems he took the lead. By that time B.B. King was famous acroos the nation, in 1955, he used to go on tour 300 nights a year playing for hours each time.

White teenagers started to pay attention to "black" music, and he became a main-stream success, influencing a legion of guitarists & artists to come, including a young Elvis Presley who used to attend his shows as often as he could. The 60s B.B. King In the early 60s B.B. King signed with ABC-Paramount records, and kept releasing top selling songs such as "Sweet Sixteen" (originally from Joe Turner), "Got a right to love my baby" and "Partin' Time". In 1964 he released one of his all-time best albums, the "Live at the Regal", recorded in Chicago, regarded as one of the greatest ever blues albums. later that same year he released another famous track "How blue can you get", followed by "Don't Answer the Door" and specially "Paying the Cost to Be the Boss", which reached top ten a couple years later. In 1969 he recorded "Why I sing the blues", and it was in that same year that B.B.

King would release what is probably his most famous track to date, the one that made him world-wide known and forever regarded as one of the best blues men taht ever existed, "The Thrill is Gone", which got high in blues and pop lists alike. The 70s Although the 70s were not kind years for bluesmen, B.B. King managed to stay in shape and kept getting good sales in those years. Hits such as "To Know You is To Love You" and "I Like to Live the Love" were amongst the most popular songs from the early 70s. Come 1976 he released some duets along with Bland, and later in 1978 he joined the Jazzy Crusaders and released "When it all comes down" and " Never make your move too soon". He also released the country sounding album "Love me tender", but it's not regarded as one of his best though. From the 80s to Present Days B.B. King B.B. King released some remarkable LPs during the 80s such as "World Somewhere" (1981) and "My guitar sings the Blues" in 1986.

One year later he received a Grammy Award for his dedication to music. In the 90s he released "Live at San Quentin" (1990), "Live at the Apollo" (1991) and Blues Summit (1992). Though he didn't record quite as much as in the past he kept going on frenzy tours, playing over 300 gigs per year. He also made some unforgettable collaborations, such as the one with U2 in "When Love Comes to Town", or 2000s awesome album "Riding with the King" along with Eric Clapton , with whom he also went to Crossroads Festival in 2007. Thinking of retirement, B.B. King had gone on his "Farewel Tour" during 2006, but truth is he reappeared several times after that in Brazil, Crossroads festival and Chicago Blues Festival 2008. B.B. King Gear B.B. King was actually born with built-in ultimate gear: his fingers!

But if we go beyond that little detail, next thing everyone notices is his beloved "Lucille" guitar: Lucille is a modified black Gibson ES-335, a semihollow electric with two humbuckers, equipped with Gibson B.B. King Signature strings, Signature Gauge .010 .013 .017p .032w .045w .054w. The name of the guitar comes from a gig back in 1949. A couple guys there got into a fight over a woman, and they ended setting the club on fire. B.B. King scaped, but then he realised he had forgotten his guitar inside. Risking his life to save the guitar, he asked what the name of the woman that the two men were fighting for was, and it turned out to be Lucille. Ever since he has named his guitars "Lucille" (there are several "Lucilles"!), and Gibson even released an official model resembling B.B. Kings modifications, in 1981.

These modifications include the fine-tuner tailpiece, the semi-hollow body with no soundholes, the varitone 6 way control which enables a huge range of different tones and, of course, "Lucille" engraved in the headstock. B.B. King's preferred amp is a Lab Series L5, which is a solid-state 2×12 combo, but he also is known to use Fender Twin Reverbs with Altec Lansing speakers when he doesn't have a Las Series 5 available. King's magnificent voice goes through a Shure SM58 microphone, wedge monitors, and side fills. His amp is miked with a Shure SM57. Style & Influences B.B. King His main influences were bluesmen T-Bone Walker, Lonnie Johnson, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Elmore James, Bukka White (who was his cousin), Robert Lockwood ,Lowell Fulson, and also jazz players such as Charlie Christian and Django Reinhardt. A mixture of Blues and Gospel in his early days, spiced with some Country & Jazz are the key to his amazing, emotive, articulate licks. Famous for his mastery of vibrato finger technique and sliding bent notes, B.B.

King is actually someone who has influenced generations of guitarists and artists such as Buddy Guy, Eric Clapton , Stevie Ray Vaughan , George Harrison, Jimi Hendrix and Jeff Beck, to name just a few. B.B. King is a living legend, an American icon, the "King of the blues": someone to be admired and remembered forever. Interesting Facts about B.B. King - Married twice: in 1944 and 1958 - Divorced twice - Father of 15 children from 15 different women, not his ex-wifes. - Member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame - Diabetic - He has two honorary doctorates in music from Yale and Brown - Vegetarian - He is very active in guitar workshops & seminars, and is very keen on teaching guitar. - He is a Licensed Pilot - He doesn't smoke, nor drink - He owns clubs in Memphis, L.A. and NYC Discography 1971 Live in Cook County Jail 1972 Guess Who 1974 Together for the First Time 1975 Lucille Talks Back 1976 Bobby Bland and B. B.

King Together Again...Live 1978 Midnight Believer 1980 Now Appearing at Ole Miss (live) 1981 There Must Be a Better World Somewhere 1982 Love Me Tender 1983 Why I Sing the Blues 1985 Six Silver Strings 1990 B.B. King and Sons Live (live) 1991 Live at San Quentin 1991 Live at the Apollo (live) 1991 There is Always One More Time 1991 Bacon Double Cheeseburger 1992 King of the Blues 1995 Lucille & Friends 1997 Best of King Platinum 1998 Blues on the Bayou 1999 Live in Japan 1999 Let the Good Times Roll 2000 Riding with the King 2x Multi-Platinum 2000 Makin' Love Is Good for You 2003 Reflections 2005 B. B. King & Friends: 80 2007 The Best of the Early Years 2008 Live 1960 The Electric B.

B. King - His Best 1981 Great Moments with B. B. King 1989 The King of the Blues: 1989 1989 Got My Mojo Working 1992 King of the Blues 1992 Why I Sing the Blues 2003 Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues: B. B. King 2005 Ultimate Collection Blues Legend B.B. King Dies at 89 | Billboard Blues Legend B.B. King Dies at 89 COMMENTS Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images Blues musician B.B. King poses for a portrait with his Gibson hollowbody electric guitar nicknamed "Lucille" in circa 1970. The Mississippi guitar aficionado and father of Lucille was a tireless road warrior. B.B. King , the last of the Southern-born blues musicians who defined modern electric blues in the 1950s and would influence scores of rock and blues guitarists, has died. He was 89. The Mississippi-born guitarist, who had suffered from Type II diabetes for two decades, died peacefully in his sleep at 9:40 p.m.

PDT Thursday at his home in Las Vegas, his attorney Brent Bryson tells the AP. In October, King fell ill during a show and after being diagnosed with dehydration and exhaustion, canceled his concert tour and had not returned to touring at the time of his death. With his trusty Gibson guitar Lucille, King developed his audiences in stages, connecting with African-Americans region by region in the 1950s and '60s, breaking through to the American mainstream in the '70s and becoming a global ambassador for the blues soon thereafter, becoming the first blues musician to play the Soviet Union. B.B. King Rushed to Las Vegas Hospital: Report King, whose best-known song was "The Thrill is Gone," developed a commercial style of the blues guitar-playing long on vibrato and short, stinging guitar runs while singing almost exclusively about romance. Unlike the musicians who influenced him, Blind Lemon Jefferson and T-Bone Walker, for example, or his contemporaries Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker and Howlin Wolf whose music bore geographic identities, King's music was not tethered to the style heard at the Mississippi plantation he was born on or the Beale Street sound in Memphis where he first established his career.

He took rural 12-bar blues and welded it to big city, horn driven ensembles populated with musicians who understood swing and jazz, but played music that worked a groove and allowed King's honey-sweet vocals and passionate guitar licks to stand out. His solos often started with a four- or five-note statement before sliding into a soothing, jazzy phrase; it's the combination of tension and release that King learned from gospel singers and the jazz saxophonists Lester Young and Johnny Hodges. "The first rock 'n' roll I ever knew about was Fats Domino and Little Richard because they were playing blues but differently," King said in the liner notes to MCA's 1992 box set King of the Blues. "And I started to do what I do now -- incorporating. You can't just stay in the same groove all the time. ... I tried to edge a little closer to Fats and all of them, but not to go completely." The universal appeal of King's guitar sound, admired by the likes of Stevie Ray Vaughan, Michael Bloomfield and Eric Clapton, and his welcoming performance style opened doors for him globally as he was one of the most consistent touring acts of the last 50 years.

For more than half a century King averaged 275 shows per year; in 1956 alone, he played 342 one-nighters. "I found that each time I went to a place I would get more fans," King says in the book The B.B. King Treasures. "I started to get letters, and in that area people would buy records. People thought I was making a lot of money because I was traveling a lot. That was the only way I could survive." King had a 40-year stretch on the Billboard 200 with 33 titles charting. His 2000 album with Eric Clapton, Riding With the King, hit No. 3, King’s chart peak. On his own, King hit the top 40 twice: 1970’s Indianola Mississippi Seeds, which followed the album that included “The Thrill is Gone,” Completely Well, hit No. 26, and Live In Cook County Jail reached No. 25 a year later. B.B. King is tied with Joe Bonamassa for most albums on the Blues Albums chart -- 25 titles since the chart started in 1995.

Live in Cook County Jailwas the biggest of 25 albums that landed on the Top R&B Albums chart, hitting No. 1 for three weeks during its 31-week run on the chart. Nine of King’s albums hit No. 1 on the Blues Albums chart, the last being Live at the Royal Albert Hall 2011 in 2012. King landed 35 songs on the Hot 100 between 1957 when “Be Careful With a Fool” peaked at No. 95 and “When Love Comes to Town,” a duet with U2, reached No. 68. King’s chart peak was “The Thrill is Gone,” his 1969 single that hit No. 15. King only had two other top 40 hits. King won 15 Grammy Awards, received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1987 and was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1980 and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987. Nearly as famous as the man was the man’s guitar.

In the winter of 1949, while King was performing in a club in Twist, Ark., a pail filled with kerosene, lighted to keep the place warm, was knocked over during a brawl between two men over a woman, and the place went up in flames. “When I got on the outside, I realized then that I had left my guitar [a Gibson L-30 with a DeArmond pickup] on the inside. So I went back for it,” he told Jazzweekly.com. “The building was wooden and burning rapidly. It started to collapse around me, and I almost lost my life trying to save my guitar. B.B. King Cancels Shows After Falling Ill in Chicago “So the next morning, we found out that these two guys who were fighting were fighting about a lady that worked in the little dance hall. We learned that her name was Lucille. So I named the guitar Lucille to remind me to never do a thing like that again.” (King partnered with Gibson in 1982 to create a guitar the B.B. King Lucille.) Born Riley King on Sept.

16, 1925, in the Mississippi Delta near Itta Bena, he was raised on a cotton farm by his maternal grandmother, Elnora. His mother died he was 9, his grandmother when he was 14. He picked cotton on a plantation in Indianola, Miss., and his first recording, made in 1940, was the “Sharecropper Record” in 1940. King learned the guitar by studying Jefferson, Walker, Lonnie Johnson and his cousin, Booker “Bukka” White, who taught him the finer points of guitar. “I guess the earliest sound of blues that I can remember was in the fields while people would be pickin’ cotton or choppin’ or something,’ ” King recalled in a 1988 interview with Living Blues. “When I play and sing now, I can hear those same sounds that I used to hear then.” He believed gospel singing was a path to success and in 1943 joined the Famous St. John Gospel Singers, which was featured on WGRM, a gospel radio station. He sang in church on Sundays, then changed hats in the evenings to play for tips on the street corners of Indianola.

That same year he joined the Army, but his stay lasted less than three months. He spent his service days driving a tractor on a Delta plantation and his weekends at Indianola music spots soaking up the likes of Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Robert Nighthawk. At that time, he decided he would attempt to play blues rather than gospel. After the war, King moved in with Bukka White in Memphis and caught his first break in 1948 performing on Sonny Boy Williamson’s radio program on KWEM in West Memphis, Tenn. It led to engagements at the Sixteenth Avenue Grill and later a 10-minute spot on black-staffed and managed Memphis radio station WDIA. He was billed as Riley King, the Blues Boy from Beale Street, later shortened to the Blues Boy and then just B.B. King’s first record deal was with the small Nashville label Bullet Records, his first single being “Miss Martha King,” written for his first wife. That led to a deal in 1949 with the Bihari Brothers, whose labels included RPM, Modern and Kent, and quickly found success.

His first hit, “3 O’Clock Blues,”was recorded at the Memphis YMCA in 1951 with Ike Turner on piano. It spent 17 weeks on the Top R&B Singles chart, five of them at No. 1, leading to King signing with Universal Attractions and getting booked nationally at theaters that catered to African-American audiences, among them: New York’s Apollo Theatre and Washington, D.C.’s Howard Theater. Like many blues artists of the period, King did not receive his fair share of profits as writing credits on some of his songs listed him alongside Joe Josea, Jules Taub and Sam Ling. “Some of the songs I wrote, they added a name when I copyrighted it," King told Blues Access magazine. "There was no such thing as Ling or Josea. No such thing. That way, the company could claim half of your song.” In the early 1960s, King signed with ABC-Paramount, then home to Ray Charles, and his records took on a more sophisticated tone mostly due to him working with arrangers for the first time. His 1965 concert album Live at the Regal, recorded in Chicago, became a hallmark concert LP.

In February 1967, King was booked on a bill at the Fillmore Auditorium in san Francisco with Moby Grape and the Steve Miller Band, a booking King thought was a mistake after he arrived, having never played to an all-white audience. Miller and promoter Bill Graham were big fans who wanted him on the bill. "We were all just thrilled to the core," Miller said in B.B. King Treasures. "It was a very emotional night. He had tears in his eyes because the audience, as soon as B.B. came out on stage, just stood up and gave him a standing ovation." King recalled it as the night he was viewed as a musician instead of as a blues singer. It also led to King meeting and performing with the white blues-rock musicians, among them Bloomfield, Al Kooper and the Blues Project and Clapton, who told journalists the highlight of his first visit to the U.S. was meeting King. Sid Seidenberg, King's accountant who became his manger in 1967, took control of the guitarist's career to get King ahead of the IRS, to which he owed $1 million.

Seidenberg cut King's band in half to five pieces, got him signed with the Associated Booking Corp. and got him booked into rock ballrooms and opening for the Rolling Stones, which led to appearances on The Tonight Show and The Ed Sullivan Show. In 1969, he scored his first hit single. "I had been carrying 'The Thrill is Gone' around for seven or eight years," King said in the liner notes of King of the Blues. "Had tried it many times, but it would never come out like I wanted it. "We were in the studio from about 10 o'clock to 3 in the morning and had done 'The Thrill' and a couple others. Funny thing was, [producer] Bill Szymczyk didn't like it at first. About five in the morning he calls me .... he says 'I've got this idea to put strings on "Thrill" ' and I said 'fine.' About two weeks later he got Bert de Coteaux to put strong son it and it really did enhance it."

Question: What does blues singer B.B. King call his guitar?
Answer: Lucille