Memphis is the Home of the Blues. It all started on Beale Street. It first rang out over the cotton fields of the Mississippi Delta. It migrated to the streets and clubs of Memphis and went on to influence music all over the world. I AM a Beale Street Blues Boy.
Friday, May 15, 2015
The King Is Dead. Long Live the King. B B King.
B.
B. King, whose world-weary voice and wailing guitar lifted him from the
cotton fields of Mississippi to a global stage and the apex of American
blues, died on Thursday at his home in Las Vegas. He was 89.
His death was reported on his website, which said
he died in his sleep. Mr. King, who was in hospice care, had been
performing until October 2014, when he canceled a tour, citing
dehydration and exhaustion stemming from diabetes.
B B King went out on the road and never came back after one of his first
recordings reached the top of the rhythm-and-blues charts in 1951. He
began in juke joints, country dance halls and ghetto nightclubs. Then he
joined "The Chitling Circuit" playing 342 one-night stands in 1956 and
200 to 300 shows a year for a half-century thereafter, rising to concert
halls, casino main stages and international acclaim.
The "Chitlin'
Circuit" is the collective name given to the string of performance
venues throughout the eastern, southern, and upper mid-west areas of the
United States that were safe and acceptable for African American
musicians, comedians, and other entertainers to perform in during the
age of racial segregation in the United States (from at least the early
19th century through the 1960s).
The name derives from the soul food item chitterlings (stewed pig intestines).
Noted
theaters on the chitlin' circuit included the Royal Peacock in Atlanta;
the Carver Theatre in Birmingham, Alabama; the Cotton Club, Smalls
Paradise and the Apollo Theater in New York City; Robert's Show Lounge,
Club DeLisa and the Regal Theatre in Chicago; the Howard Theatre in
Washington, D.C.; the Uptown Theatre in Philadelphia; the Royal Theatre
in Baltimore; the Fox Theatre in Detroit; the Victory Grill in Austin,
Texas; the Hippodrome Theatre in Richmond, Virginia; the Ritz Theatre in
Jacksonville, Florida; the Manhattan Casino in St. Petersburg, Florida,
and The Madam C. J. Walker Theatre on Indiana Avenue in Indianapolis;
and, later the Circle Star Theater in San Carlos, California. This venue
became an annual occurrence for the Dynamic Duo of B B King and Bobby
"Blue" Bland, together.
Many notable performers worked on the
chitlin' circuit, including B B King, Bobby "Blue" Bland, Count Basie,
Sam Cooke, Sheila Guyse, Jackie Wilson, Peg Leg Bates, George Benson,
Hammond B-3, Jeff Palmer, James Brown & The Famous Flames, Cab
Calloway, Ray Charles, Wayne Cochran, Dorothy Dandridge, Sammy Davis,
Jr., Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, The Jackson 5, Redd Foxx, Aretha
Franklin, Jimi Hendrix, Billie Holiday, John Lee Hooker, Lena Horne,
Etta James, B.B. King, Donna Hightower, Patti LaBelle, Moms Mabley, The
Delfonics, Gladys Knight & the Pips, Wilson Pickett, Richard Pryor,
Otis Redding, Dr. Lonnie Smith, Marvin Gaye, Little Richard, The
Miracles, Ike & Tina Turner, The Four Tops, The Isley Brothers, The
Supremes, The Temptations, Little Anthony and the Imperials, Tammi
Terrell, Muddy Waters, Johnnie Taylor, Tyrone Davis, O.V. Wright, Marvin
Sease, Bobby "Blue" Bland, Flip Wilson, Jimmie Walker and Roy Hamilton.
Blues guitarist B.B. King passed away Thursday May 14th at the age of 89. Here, Bonnie Raitt pays tribute to her friend, collaborator and inspiration. B.B. was a god from the first time we all heard him. You listen to
those early recordings with that cry in his voice, even as a young man. I
still have the 45 of "Rock Me Baby" that I wore out playing when I was a
teenager.
I used to sit there and play it and move the needle back to
the beginning and play it over and over. It's so sexy and the groove is
hellacious. A lot of people have covered that song, but that's my
favorite version. Every great blues guitarist has his own style. But
with B.B., it was about his vibrato, his phrasing and the licks he chose
— and his restraint. It was all about what he played and what he didn't play. He was sweet and eloquent in his playing, but when he turned it on, he could be fierce.
My manager worked with Buddy Guy and Junior Wells, and B.B. was
Buddy's hero, so I got to go backstage and see B.B. when he was in and
out of blues festivals. He was always very complimentary about my
playing. He was always so gentle and humble and appreciative and he got a
big kick out of the fact that all us young white kids got him. We
became friends and later he would confide in me about his personal life
and how he loved the ladies. To watch him backstage flirting with
beautiful women was a delight. He loved his fans, but he enjoyed the
company of kind and appreciative women. I always wished he'd had a
steadfast and steady partner, but he was on the road so much. He could
have retired years ago and cut his schedule back, but he told me he
stayed on the road to be able to support his band and crew. He had a big
band. I always wondered how he could afford it. He just worked all the
time.
He was pretty happy, but I always wondered if he was a lonely guy.
But I never asked him about that — I didn't want to invade his space. He
must have had some kind of pain in his life, but talk about overcoming
whatever hardships he had.
When we recorded "Baby I Love You" [for the 1997 King duets album Deuces Wild],
he had just played Dallas the night before and drove all night to get
to the studio. He must have had two hours of sleep. But he was still
such a champ. He was completely professional and said, "Whatever key
you'd like." He was so classy and so bold at the same time. He was an
old-school Southern gentleman, but his playing was razor-sharp. I
learned so much about dynamics from him.
Mr.
King married country blues to big-city rhythms and created a sound
instantly recognizable to millions: a stinging guitar with a shimmering
vibrato, notes that coiled and leapt like an animal, and a voice that
groaned and bent with the weight of lust, longing and lost love.
“I
wanted to connect my guitar to human emotions,” Mr. King said in his
autobiography, “Blues All Around Me” (1996), written with David Ritz.
In
performances, his singing and his solos flowed into each other as he
wrung notes from the neck of his guitar, vibrating his hand as if it
were wounded, his face a mask of suffering. Many of the songs he sang —
like his biggest hit, “The Thrill Is Gone” (“I’ll still live on/But so
lonely I’ll be”) — were poems of pain and perseverance.
The
music historian Peter Guralnick once noted that Mr. King helped expand
the audience for the blues through “the urbanity of his playing, the
absorption of a multiplicity of influences, not simply from the blues,
along with a graciousness of manner and willingness to adapt to new
audiences and give them something they were able to respond to.”
B.
B. stood for Blues Boy, a name he took with his first taste of fame in
the 1940s. His peers were bluesmen like Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf,
whose nicknames fit their hard-bitten lives. But he was born a King,
albeit in a sharecropper’s shack surrounded by dirt-poor laborers and
wealthy landowners.
Mr.
King went out on the road and never came back after one of his first
recordings reached the top of the rhythm-and-blues charts in 1951. He
began in juke joints, country dance halls and ghetto nightclubs, playing
342 one-night stands in 1956 and 200 to 300 shows a year for a
half-century thereafter, rising to concert halls, casino main stages and
international acclaim.
He
was embraced by rock ’n’ roll fans of the 1960s and ’70s, who remained
loyal as they grew older together. His playing influenced many of the
most successful rock guitarists of the era, including Eric Clapton and
Jimi Hendrix.
Mr.
King considered a 1968 performance at the Fillmore West, the San
Francisco rock palace, to have been the moment of his commercial
breakthrough, he told a public-television interviewer in 2003. A few
years earlier, he recalled, an M.C. in an elegant Chicago club had
introduced him thus: “O.K., folks, time to pull out your chitlins and
your collard greens, your pigs’ feet and your watermelons, because here
is B. B. King.” It had infuriated him.
When
he saw “long-haired white people” lining up outside the Fillmore, he
said, he told his road manager, “I think they booked us in the wrong
place.” Then the promoter Bill Graham introduced him to the sold-out
crowd: “Ladies and gentlemen, I bring you the chairman of the board, B.
B. King.”
“Everybody stood up, and I cried,” Mr. King said. “That was the beginning of it.”
By
his 80th birthday he was a millionaire many times over. He owned a
mansion in Las Vegas, a closet full of embroidered tuxedoes and smoking
jackets, a chain of nightclubs bearing his name (including a popular
room on West 42nd Street in Manhattan) and the personal and professional
satisfaction of having endured.
Through
it all he remained with the great love of his life, his guitar. He told
the tale a thousand times: He was playing a dance hall in Twist, Ark.,
in the early 1950s when two men got into a fight and knocked over a
kerosene stove. Mr. King fled the blaze — and then remembered his $30
guitar. He ran into the burning building to rescue it.
He
learned thereafter that the fight had been about a woman named Lucille.
For the rest of his life, Mr. King addressed his guitars — big Gibsons,
curved like a woman’s hips — as Lucille.
He
married twice, unsuccessfully, and was legally single from 1966 onward;
by his own account he fathered 15 children with 15 women. But a Lucille
was always at his side.
Riley
B. King (the middle initial apparently did not stand for anything) was
born on Sept. 16, 1925, to Albert and Nora Ella King, both
sharecroppers, in Berclair, a Mississippi hamlet outside the small town
of Itta Bena. His memories of the Depression included the sound of
sanctified gospel music, the scratch of 78-r.p.m. blues records, the
sweat of dawn-to-dusk work and the sight of a black man lynched by a
white mob.
By
early 1940 Mr. King’s mother was dead and his father was gone. He was
14 and on his own, “sharecropping an acre of cotton, living on a
borrowed allowance of $2.50 a month,” wrote Dick Waterman, a blues
scholar. “When the crop was harvested, Riley ended his first year of
independence owing his landlord $7.54.”
In
November 1941 came a revelation: “King Biscuit Time” went on the air,
broadcasting on KFFA, a radio station in Helena, Ark. It was the first
radio show to feature the Mississippi Delta blues, and young Riley King
heard it on his lunch break at the plantation. A largely self-taught
guitarist, he now knew what he wanted to be when he grew up: a musician
on the air.
The
King Biscuit show featured Rice Miller, a primeval bluesman and one of
two performers who worked under the name Sonny Boy Williamson. After
serving in the Army and marrying his first wife, Martha Denton, Mr.
King, then 22, went to seek him out in Memphis, looking for work.
Memphis and its musical hub, Beale Street, lay 130 miles north of his
birthplace, and it looked like a world capital to him.
Mr.
Miller had two performances booked that night, one in Memphis and one
in Mississippi. He handed the lower-paying nightclub job to Mr. King. It
paid $12.50.
Mr. King was making about $5 a day on the plantation. He never returned to his tractor.
He
was a hit, and quickly became a popular disc jockey playing the blues
on a Memphis radio station, WDIA. “Before Memphis,” he wrote in his
autobiography, “I never even owned a record player. Now I was sitting in
a room with a thousand records and the ability to play them whenever I
wanted. I was the kid in the candy store, able to eat it all. I gorged
myself.”
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Memphis
had heard five decades of the blues: country sounds from the Delta,
barrelhouse boogie-woogie, jumps and shuffles and gospel shouts. He made
it all his own. From records he absorbed the big-band sounds of Count
Basie, the rollicking jump blues of Louis Jordan, the electric-guitar
styles of the jazzman Charlie Christian and the bluesman T-Bone Walker.
He
began a tour of the biggest stages a bluesman could play: the Apollo
Theater in Harlem, the Howard Theater in Washington, the Royal Theater
in Baltimore. By the time his wife divorced him after eight years, he
was playing 275 one-night stands a year on the so-called chitlin’
circuit.
There
were hard times when the blues fell out of fashion with young black
audiences in the early 1960s. Mr. King never forgot being booed at the
Royal by teenagers who cheered the sweeter sounds of Sam Cooke.
“They
didn’t know about the blues,” he said 40 years after the fact. “They
had been taught that the blues was the bottom of the totem pole, done by
slaves, and they didn’t want to think along those lines.”
Mr.
King’s second marriage, to Sue Hall, also lasted eight years, ending in
divorce in 1966. He responded in 1969 with his best-known recording,
“The Thrill Is Gone,” a minor-key blues about having loved and lost. It
was co-written and originally recorded in 1951 by another blues singer,
Roy Hawkins, but Mr. King made it his own.
Mr.
King is survived by 11 children. Three of them had recently petitioned
to take over his affairs, claiming that Mr. King’s manager, Laverne
Toney, was taking advantage of him. A Las Vegas judge rejected their
petition this month.
The
success of “The Thrill Is Gone” coincided with a surge in the
popularity of the blues with a young white audience. Mr. King began
playing folk festivals and college auditoriums, rock shows and resort
clubs, and appearing on “The Tonight Show.”
Though
he never had another hit that big, he had more than four decades of the
road before him. He eventually played the world — Russia and China as
well as Europe and Japan. His schedule around his 81st birthday, in
September 2006, included nine cities over two weeks in Denmark, Belgium,
the Netherlands, Germany, France and Luxembourg. Despite health
problems, he maintained a busy touring schedule until 2014.
In
addition to winning 15 Grammy Awards (including a lifetime achievement
award), having a star on Hollywood Boulevard and being inducted in both
the Rock and Roll and Blues Halls of Fame, Mr. King was among the
recipients of the Kennedy Center Honors in 1995 and was given the
Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2006, awards rarely associated with the
blues. In 1999, in a public conversation with William Ferris, chairman
of the National Endowment for the Humanities, Mr. King recounted how he
came to sing the blues.
“Growing
up on the plantation there in Mississippi, I would work Monday through
Saturday noon,” he said. “I’d go to town on Saturday afternoons, sit on
the street corner, and I’d sing and play.
“I’d
have me a hat or box or something in front of me. People that would
request a gospel song would always be very polite to me, and they’d say:
‘Son, you’re mighty good. Keep it up. You’re going to be great one
day.’ But they never put anything in the hat.
“But
people that would ask me to sing a blues song would always tip me and
maybe give me a beer. They always would do something of that kind.
Sometimes I’d make 50 or 60 dollars one Saturday afternoon. Now you know
why I’m a blues singer.”
(NYTimes)
(Willie King, from left,
Tanya Deckard, Patty King, Karen Williams, Barbara King Winfree and Rita
Washington stand outside of a funeral home after a private family
viewing of B.B. King.)
Regicide is the deliberate killing of a King. Two daughters of
legendary bluesman B.B. King levied bombshell charges Monday, 25 May,
against two of his closest advisers — claiming they poisoned him.
Las
Vegas homicide detectives launched an investigation into the death of
“The Thrill is Gone” musician after his adult children alleged in
affidavits that he was “murdered.”
An emergency autopsy was performed on King’s body over the weekend to check for foul play.
Brent Bryson, an attorney for King’s estate, called the daughters’
allegations “unfounded” and “extremely disrespectful of B.B. King.”
He said King received around-the-clock care and monitoring by medical
professionals “up until the time that he peacefully passed away in his
sleep” and three doctors determined he was well-cared-for in his dying
days.
“I hope they have a factual basis that they can demonstrate for their defamatory and libelous allegations,” Bryson said.
The feud between King’s family and assistants began even before King
died. In November, Patty King filed a Las Vegas police report in Las
Vegas against Johnson and Toney, who had her father’s power of attorney,
over her father’s affairs, accusing them of abusing King and pilfering
up to $30 million. She also charged they withheld his medication and
swiped several Rolex watches and a ring, valued at $250,000, from him.
In April, a Nevada judge rejected Karen Williams’ petition to take control of her father’s affairs from Toney.
The family also claimed Toney refused to let them see King in hospice during his final days.
King’s body was returned to a Las Vegas mortuary following an
autopsy. Toxicology reports will not be available for 8 weeks, around
July 20, 2015.
A memorial procession for King is planned for
Wednesday in Memphis. His casket is expected to be driven down famed
Beale St., where King got his start and garnered the nickname “Beale
Street Blues Boy.”
King’s funeral is scheduled for Saturday at Bell Grove M.B. Church in his hometown of Indianola, Miss.
U. S. Ambassador Colleen Bell, Embassy Budapest, Hungary said: Remembering B.B. King We are saddened to learn that Riley B. “B.B.” King, the legendary American guitarist, singer and songwriter, died Thursday night at the age of 89. As known as “The King of the Blues,” B.B. King leaves behind a wonderful legacy as a pioneer who championed a unique form of American music, spreading a love of the blues around the world – including Hungary, where he performed several times and worked with Hungarian musicians. 15-time Grammy Award winner, Mr. King received the National Medal of Arts in 1990 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2006. We join devoted fans in Hungary, America, and all over the world, in honoring B.B. King’s incredible legacy. Do you have a favorite memory of B.B. King or his music?
B B King went out on the road and never came back after one of his first recordings reached the top of the rhythm-and-blues charts in 1951. He began in juke joints, country dance halls and ghetto nightclubs. Then he joined "The Chitling Circuit" playing 342 one-night stands in 1956 and 200 to 300 shows a year for a half-century thereafter, rising to concert halls, casino main stages and international acclaim. The "Chitlin' Circuit" is the collective name given to the string of performance venues throughout the eastern, southern, and upper mid-west areas of the United States that were safe and acceptable for African American musicians, comedians, and other entertainers to perform in during the age of racial segregation in the United States (from at least the early 19th century through the 1960s). The name derives from the soul food item chitterlings (stewed pig intestines). Noted theaters on the chitlin' circuit included the Royal Peacock in Atlanta; the Carver Theatre in Birmingham, Alabama; the Cotton Club, Smalls Paradise and the Apollo Theater in New York City; Robert's Show Lounge, Club DeLisa and the Regal Theatre in Chicago; the Howard Theatre in Washington, D.C.; the Uptown Theatre in Philadelphia; the Royal Theatre in Baltimore; the Fox Theatre in Detroit; the Victory Grill in Austin, Texas; the Hippodrome Theatre in Richmond, Virginia; the Ritz Theatre in Jacksonville, Florida; the Manhattan Casino in St. Petersburg, Florida, and The Madam C. J. Walker Theatre on Indiana Avenue in Indianapolis; and, later the Circle Star Theater in San Carlos, California. This venue became an annual occurrence for the Dynamic Duo of B B King and Bobby "Blue" Bland, together. Many notable performers worked on the chitlin' circuit, including B B King, Bobby "Blue" Bland, Count Basie, Sam Cooke, Sheila Guyse, Jackie Wilson, Peg Leg Bates, George Benson, Hammond B-3, Jeff Palmer, James Brown & The Famous Flames, Cab Calloway, Ray Charles, Wayne Cochran, Dorothy Dandridge, Sammy Davis, Jr., Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, The Jackson 5, Redd Foxx, Aretha Franklin, Jimi Hendrix, Billie Holiday, John Lee Hooker, Lena Horne, Etta James, B.B. King, Donna Hightower, Patti LaBelle, Moms Mabley, The Delfonics, Gladys Knight & the Pips, Wilson Pickett, Richard Pryor, Otis Redding, Dr. Lonnie Smith, Marvin Gaye, Little Richard, The Miracles, Ike & Tina Turner, The Four Tops, The Isley Brothers, The Supremes, The Temptations, Little Anthony and the Imperials, Tammi Terrell, Muddy Waters, Johnnie Taylor, Tyrone Davis, O.V. Wright, Marvin Sease, Bobby "Blue" Bland, Flip Wilson, Jimmie Walker and Roy Hamilton.
Regicide is the deliberate killing of a King. Two daughters of legendary bluesman B.B. King levied bombshell charges Monday, 25 May, against two of his closest advisers — claiming they poisoned him. Las Vegas homicide detectives launched an investigation into the death of “The Thrill is Gone” musician after his adult children alleged in affidavits that he was “murdered.” An emergency autopsy was performed on King’s body over the weekend to check for foul play.
King’s body was returned to a Las Vegas mortuary following an autopsy. Toxicology reports will not be available for 8 weeks, around July 20, 2015. A memorial procession for King is planned for Wednesday in Memphis. His casket is expected to be driven down famed Beale St., where King got his start and garnered the nickname “Beale Street Blues Boy.” King’s funeral is scheduled for Saturday at Bell Grove M.B. Church in his hometown of Indianola, Miss.
I am a thoroughly civilized, humane, cosmopolitan, polished, restrained, enjoyable, entertaining Info-maniac. I am a staunch exponent of individual dignity, freedom, equal access to legal services, and equal protection of the law. Here I hope to demonstrate my emotional restraint, humbleness of sentiment, psychological subtlety, lucid style, and simple language, without evading political reality or eternal truth. Daily I am excited that I have the right to create the beginning of a new self and to challenge old habits and attitudes I no longer choose to accept. I choose to relax in the present with my direction firmly in mind. I have an enormous capacity for creative and clever ideas and thoughts. It is phenomenal what I can do. I am capable of so much learning and absorbing a lot of information. My potential is a source of pleasant surprise for me.
Each day, I increase in knowledge, skills, strength, faith, and abilities.With each adventure, the boundary hemming in my potential expands easily to accomodate my growth and achievements.