The Thrill is Gone: Blues Legend B. B. King Dies
Friday, May 15th, 2015Legendary blues guitarist and singer B. B. King died Thursday at the age of 89 in Las Vegas. He had been in home hospice care for two weeks after suffering from dehydration.
Legendary blues guitarist and singer B. B. King died May 14, 2015, at the age of 89. (c) Karen Pulfer Focht, LGI
With his electric guitar named “Lucille,” King helped develop the urban blues sound. This style of playing features wide vibrato, loud and ringing notes, and solos filled with piercing feedback. King was known as a great showman, popular with both audiences and musicians. He was a major influence on rock music, especially on British musicians who emerged in the 1960′s, such as Eric Clapton, John Mayall, and Mick Jagger and Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones.
Legend has it that King first named his signature Gibson guitar “Lucille” in the mid-1950’s after a woman who died in a fire. King was performing at a dance in Twist, Arkansas, when two men fighting over a woman named Lucille knocked over a kerosene heater that started the fire. King ran out, forgetting his guitar, and risked his life to go back and get it. He named the guitar Lucille, “to remind myself never to do anything that foolish.”
King acquired his own nickname as a disc jockey on radio station WDIA/AM in Memphis. He also performed on the station and on Beale Street, the site of many blues clubs in that city. He became known as the “Beale Street Blues Boy” and then “Blues Boy King,” which was shortened to “B. B. King.”
Riley B. King was born on Sept. 16, 1925, near Itta Bena, Mississippi, in a cabin on a plantation. He bought a cheap guitar at the age of 12 and taught himself to play. He heard and played the local variety of blues before hitchhiking to Memphis when he was 23.
King made his first commercial recording in 1949. His hits include “Three O’Clock Blues” (1951), “Everyday I Have the Blues” (1955), “Sweet Little Angel” (1956), “Rock Me Baby” (1964), and “The Thrill Is Gone” (1969). King was nominated for 30 Grammy Awards and won half of them. He was inducted into the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame in 1980 and into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987.
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