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 News of King's death, confirmed late Thursday on a Facebook
page linked to the website of his daughter Claudette, triggered
shockwaves across social media, with blues, rock and country
music stars lining up to pay tribute.
King was hospitalized in April for a few days after suffering
from dehydration related to Type 2 diabetes. In May he said in a
Facebook post that he was in hospice care at his home.
Born on a plantation to sharecropper parents, he outlived his
post-World War Two blues peers - Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf,
Jimmy Reed, Lightnin' Hopkins and John Lee Hooker - to see the
rough music born in the cotton fields of the segregated South
reach a new audience.
"Being a blues singer is like being black twice," King wrote in
his autobiography, "Blues All Around Me," of the lack of respect
the music got compared with rock and jazz.
"While the civil rights movement was fighting for the respect of
black people, I felt I was fighting for the respect of the
blues."
GREATEST EVER?
In 2003, Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 100 greatest
guitarists of all time ranked King at No. 3, behind only Jimi
Hendrix and Duane Allman.
Chicago blues veteran Buddy Guy described King as "the greatest
guy I ever met".
"The tone he got out of that guitar, the way he shook his left
wrist, the way he squeezed the strings... it was all new to the
whole guitar playin' world...," Guy wrote in a posting on
Instagram. "I promise I will keep these damn blues alive."
Rocker Bryan Adams said on Twitter that King was "one of the
best blues guitarists ever, maybe the best. He could do more on
one note than anyone"
Rapper Snoop Dogg, rocker Lenny Kravitz, Kiss frontman Gene
Simmons, former Beatle Ringo Starr and U.S. country singer Brad
Paisley were among others who posted tributes.
Born Riley B. King on Sept. 16, 1925 in Itta Bena, Mississippi,
he began learning guitar as a boy and sang in church choirs.
After World War Two Army service, King sang on street corners to
pick up money. In 1947 he hitchhiked to Memphis, Tennessee,
where he learned from and played with his cousin, revered blues
guitarist Bukka White.
King went from touring black bars and dance halls in the 1940s
and '50s to headlining an all-blues show at New York's Carnegie
Hall in 1970 and recording with the likes of Clapton and U2 in
the '90s.
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He had a deep, resonant singing voice and, despite having what he
called "stupid fingers," an immediately recognizable guitar sound.
His unique style of trilling the strings with a fluttering left-hand
vibrato, which he called "the butterfly," delivered stinging
single-note licks that brimmed with emotion and helped shape early
rock.
LUCILLE
King will for ever be associated with his trademark black Gibson
guitars, all of which he christened Lucille in recollection of a
woman who two men fought over in 1949 in an Arkansas dance hall
where he was playing.
The men knocked over a kerosene lamp, setting fire to the building.
King risked his life to retrieve his $30 guitar.
In Memphis, King played in clubs and became a disc jockey at radio
station WDIA, where he was known as the Beale Street Blues Boy. That
was shortened to Blues Boy and then B.B., and those closest to him
just called him B.
King became a star of the rhythm and blues charts and at his peak
was on stage 300 nights a year and playing to audiences all over the
world - including the former Soviet Union and China. He still toured
regularly into his eighties.
In the 1960s, King enjoyed a resurgence as young British and
American rockers discovered the blues as the roots of rock 'n' roll,
building a new, mostly white following.
He won 15 Grammys, more than any other bluesman, starting in 1970
for the crossover pop hit "The Thrill Is Gone", according to the
Recording Academy. In 1987, he received a lifetime award.
King was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986 and
awarded the National Medal for the Arts in 1990.
His two marriages ended in divorce with no children but he
acknowledged fathering 15 with different women.
For eight facts about BB King.
(Reporting by Curtis Skinner in San Francisco; Writing by Bill Trott;
Editing by John Stonestreet)
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