Riley B. King, better known as the legendary blues musician B.B. King, has passed away in his sleep. He was 89.
King's attorney, Brent Bryson, tells the Associated Press that King died peacefully in his sleep in his Las Vegas home on Thursday night. The reason for his death is unspecified, but King was known to have type II diabetes. Last year, the Southern-born blues guitarist famous for his signature vibrato that influenced guitarists such as Eric Clapton, Steve Ray Vaughan, and Mike Bloomfield, canceled a tour after he fell ill due to exhaustion and dehydration during one of his shows. King was in home hospice care since then.
Born to sharecroppers in Indianola, Mississippi in 1925, King often helped his parents gather cotton in the fields, where he was first exposed to the blues when he heard his co-workers singing what used to be all-black music as they worked. Later on, King would take that music and introduce it to the mainstream world.
"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 said in an interview with Living Blues (via Hollywood Reporter). "When I play and sing now, I can hear those same sounds that I used to hear then."
The boy Riley figured he didn't want to pick cotton for the rest of his life, so he traveled to Memphis, a music town where it was easy to get booked and hard to get discovered. King stayed with his cousin Bukka White, also a respected blues artist of his time, who helped refine King's music.
King got his first break in 1948 playing with Sonny Boy Williamson's band, which helped secure for steady gigs at the Sixteenth Avenue Grill and a 10-minute spot in the black-staffed radio WDIA, where King took on the name Beale Street Blues Boy, which later became Blues Boy then just B.B.
Soon after, King was approached by Ike Turner for his first record deal, which was with Bullet Records, for his first single "Miss Martha King," in honor of his first wife. This was followed by a 1949 deal with the Bihari Brothers, known for the RPM label, which led to "3 O'Clock Blues," his first hit that took the Top R&B singles chart by storm. By that time, King had developed his distinctive style of playing the guitar, which would follow on for the rest of his six-decade long career.
The success of his first hit had booked him national performances, at first catered only to African-American audiences. In 1967, however, King was booked at the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco to play with Moby Grape and the Steve Miller Band. He told BBC that he berated his bus driver back then for bringing him to an all-white venue.
"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."
From there, King went on to establish himself as one of the greatest fixtures of American music history, earning himself a long list of awards and honors, including 15 Grammy awards, an induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and a Presidential Medal of Freedom award, the highest national honor that a civilian can receive.
But his success as a musician did not stop him from doing the one thing he loved the most - playing great music with his ever-reliable Lucille, the Gibson 335 guitar he named after a woman that two patrons at a club he was playing at were fighting over when they knocked over a kerosene lamp and started a fire. King left the wooden building but, realizing he left his beloved guitar inside, rushed back to get her. He named her Lucille "to remind myself never to do anything that foolish."
For more than 60 years, King played an average of 200 to 300 one-nighters a year, touring America churning out blues music to anyone who wanted to listen; and plenty came to listen. In 1956, he played almost the entire year for 342 nights. From the start of his booming career in the 1950s well into the 21th century, King continued to preserve the art form that is blues music, and he did so until he no longer could.
Be sure to follow T-Lounge on Twitter and visit our Facebook page.
