Looking Back on "An Evening with BB King"
This week, I had the pleasure of viewing the History Makers’ An Evening with B.B King television special. The interview, conducted in 2003, features fellow MusicMaker Isaac Hayes as the lead interviewer. Hayes acts as a fantastic counterpart to King's natural exuberance, as the two narrate the life and legacy of the undisputed King of the Blues.
Issaac Hayes and BB King share a laugh during An Evening with B.B. King
B.B King was born on September 16th, 1925 in Indianola Mississippi, but grew up on a plantation in Itta Bena. Itta Bena is the home of many notable figures, including former Atlanta Maynard Jackson, CivicMaker James Bevel, and PoliticalMaker Marion Barry. Itta Bena is also the home of former concert promoter and MusicMaker Pervis Spann. Spann not only acted as King’s manager, but also crowned him as the King of the Blues. In the interview, King refers to him as “my friend for many, many moons now.”
MusicMaker and concert promoter and manager Pervis Spann.
He recalls his childhood as poor and difficult but not necessarily “ghetto” due to its rural location. After being abandoned by his father at a young age, and then orphaned following the death of his mother and grandmother, King was left to work as a sharecropper as a child.The United States’ history of sharecropping is long and deceitful, with many families remaining in bondage through its vicious cycle of debt. King was no stranger to this exploitative system, and lived in extreme poverty and debt while honing his musical stylings.Through all of this, King bought his first guitar and formed the famous St. John’s Gospel Singers. The group's success allowed King to pay off his sharecropping debt and locate his father and siblings.
Riley King with "St. John's Gospel Singers" of Inverness, Mississippi, ca 1945(Photo: © Charles Sawyer - All rights reserved)
Shortly after rekindling familial relationships, King moved to Lexington Mississippi, where he was drafted for the Second World War. While stationed at Camp Shelby in Hattiesburg, MS, King worked longer hours than Nazi prisoners of war in the cotton fields. King says, “They had us working from can (see) til can’t (see)...and they bring these people over at about 8 or 9 o’clock in the morning, and they’d pick them up at 3 or 4 in the evening and take them back to the camps...That hurt...we were dying with them and for them.”
However. King’s service wouldn’t last forever, and he eventually moved to Memphis, TN. There, he developed his signature butterfly playing technique and achieved commercial success as a radio DJ personality. Amidst his numerous successes, the Beales Street Blues Boy becomes the Blues Boy King, and BB King was born!
King preparing for a performance for the WDIA radio station in Memphis, TN. Photo : Colin Escott/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty
King also shared with Hayes and the History Maker’s the story of naming his famous guitar. King tells the story of a running into a club engulfed in flames to save his precious six string. He would soon learn that the fire was started by two men fighting over a woman named Lucille. After surviving the flames, he named the guitar after the woman “to remind me to never do thing like that again.”
King and his band mates, Old Man Finest Newborn (Drums), Calvin Newborn (Guitar), Ben Branch (Tenor Saxophone), Thomas Branch and Sammy Jet traveled the infamous Chitlin’ Circuit. Soon, King would go from using wire hangers to keep their red bus running, to playing the Filmore West for his first white audience. Officially a world class act, King won his first Grammy award for The Thrill Is Gone. As the uncontested King of the Blues, Kiing would continue to create music well into the 21st century, touring with acts such as the Rolling stones and Tina Turner.
King passed away on May 14th, 2015 after over 50 years in the music industry. There is no doubt that King left a tremendous impact on musicians and fans alike. Towards the conclusion of An Evening with B.B. King, he tells Hayes, “If I had a half a dollar for all of my friends… I’d be a millionaire.” This is no braggadocios claim from an egotistical artist, but a somber truth stated by a natural born performer and icon.
