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Original Recordings by the Original Artists!

B.B. King
Blues | 3 CD Set
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It is hard to imagine a more influential blues figure than B. B. King, who's been at it now for a half-century. As guitarist and singer, King has been a significant factor in bringing the blues to music's major status in the Western world. Riley B. King was born in 1925 in Mississippi, the son of a sharecropper on a cotton plantation. Growing uphe learned to play guitar and by 16 he was on the street corners playing and singing. BY age 20 he was on the Memphis, Tennessee streets trying to establish a career. He lived there for a year with his cousin, noted bluesman Bukka White. He went back to farming briefly and in 1948 returned to Memphis. He had been drafted in 1944 but was discharged to work as a tractor driver with an agricultural deferment. After obtaining work with a couple of radio stations, King became a DJ on the Sepia Swing Show on WDIA, billed as the Beale Street Blues Boy. Thus he became known as Blues Boy King, and then finally B. B. King. His live playing on the radio helped spark his growing popularity. He made his first records in 1949 for Bullet Records and it was obvious this newcomer was a rising star. He then worked for Modern Records through the '50s, getting married and subsequently divorced. By 1952, he was a hit, getting to the top of Billboard's R&B charts (for 15 weeks) with "Three O'Clock Blues." At that time, King began his string of one-night stands that continued for years, one year compiling 342 dates in a 365-day span. While having his own label for a sort time, it failed, and Modern continued putting out his music, although the company is reputed to have been less than honest with copyright laws by putting names on records that had nothing to do with the music. Historically, this was not just with B. B. King, since many black entertainers over the years suffered the same financial fate and in many cases in the past 20 years have sued and won back rights to music. King's guitar playing (he calls his guitar Lucille) had a variety of influences, from jazz guitarist Charlie Christian to Django Reinhardt to bluesmen Lonnie Johnson, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Bukka White and T-Bone Walker. In turn, he has influenced rockers like Eric Clapton. He was quite successful into the '60s, changing labels and apparently trying to find the level of success associated with Ray Charles. But as his primarily black audience began heading off into the '60s soul explosion, the blues waned. It was the white discovery of blues in the mid-'60s that rekindled his career. He played San Francisco's Fillmore West ballroom in 1968 with Mike Bloomfield and Johnny Winter, who introduced him as "the greatest living blues guitarist." Not long after, his recording of Roy Hawkins' "The Thrill Is Gone" provided King with his first Top 20 pop hit, the song reaching No. 15. He had six hits in the Top 40 between 1964-74 and over years has several Grammys. He is probably the most visible blues guitarist around, playing blues and jazz festivals, recording commercials, soundtracks, TV themes, appearing with a variety of blues and rock stars and being an easygoing bluesman who shies away from controversy.

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