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Born: - Riley B. King, 16
September 1925, Indianola, Mississippi, USA.
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The son of a sharecropper, King
went to work on the plantation like any other
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young black in Mississippi, but he
had sung in amateur gospel groups from childhood.
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By the age of 16, he was also
playing blues guitar and singing on street corners.
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When he was 20 years old, he
temporarily quit sharecropping and went to Memphis,
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where he busked, and shared a room
for almost a year with his second cousin,
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Bukka White. However, it was not
until 1948 that he managed to pay off his
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debts to his former plantation
boss. After leaving farming, he returned to Memphis,
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determined to become a star. He
secured work with radio station KWEM, and then with WDIA,
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fronting a show sponsored by the
health-tonic Pepticon, which led to disc jockeying on the Sepia Swing
Show.
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Here he was billed as 'The Beale
Street Blues Boy', later amended to 'Blues Boy King', and then to 'B.B.
King'.
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Radio exposure promoted King's
live career, and he performed with a band whose
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personnel varied according to
availability. At this stage, he was still musically untutored,
and
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liable to play against his backing
musicians, but it was evident from his first recordings made
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for Bullet Records in 1949, that
his talent was striking.
The Bullet recordings brought King to the
attention of Modern Records,
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with whom he recorded for the next
10 years. As he began to tour beyond the area around
Memphis,
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his first marriage, already under
strain, ended in divorce in 1952.
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By that time, he was a national
figure, having held the number 1 spot in the Billboard
R&B
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chart for 15 weeks with 'Three
O'Clock Blues'.
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His professional life is marked by
a sense of mission, coupled with a desire
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to give the blues status and
acceptability.
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This he has achieved, bringing the
blues into the mainstream of entertainment.
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Photographs of B.B. King by John
Robert Rowlands
