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Despite being a working musician for almost six
decades, Blues legend B.B. King continues to tour on
a regular basis.
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As he enters his 56th year in Blues, B.B. King stands as perhaps the last of the remaining giants from the original post-World War II generation of bluesmen.
One by one, kingpins such as Howlin' Wolf, Sonny Boy Williamson, Muddy Waters and recently John Lee Hooker have passed on, making the question of which, if any, artists will carry Blues forward to future generations, that much more valid. But King doesn't sound worried about the future of the music to which he has devoted his life, noting he has heard plenty of fresh talent coming on to the scene in recent years.
"I think all of these young people that I've listened to, and that includes Jonny Lang and Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Jimmy King and so many others, they're all playing things I wish I could play," King says. "I swear, they're playing things that I never thought of. I wonder sometimes to myself, 'Why didn't I think of that?' And I don't think you'll miss me when I'm gone. You might just miss the name B.B. King, but all of these guys are good."
Time may prove that King is right about the Blues being in good hands for the future. But he couldn't be more wrong if he thinks the Blues world and music in general won't miss him when he's gone.
A multiple Grammy Award winner and member of both the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, there's no disputing the enormous impact King has had. Today, a legion of Blues and Rock guitarists (from Eric Clapton to Jimmy Page to Robert Cray) have been influenced -- at least on an indirect level -- by the music King has recorded and his economical and expressive style of guitar playing.
The music that populates the 50-plus albums recorded by King has helped shape the very definition of Blues. Where artists ranging from Muddy Waters to Lightnin' Hopkins to Howlin' Wolf brought a raw, visceral element to the Blues, King's sleeker, more Jazz-inflected sound brought a sophistication and an uncanny balance between elegance and edginess into the Blues vernacular.
King must surely know that. But if this interview proved anything, it's that King is a genuinely humble man who finds it hard to even remotely boast of his accomplishments.
At one point he was reminded of a statement Clapton made when that guitarist discussed Riding with the King, the 2000 CD that paired him with King. Clapton said it had only been in the preceding three or four years that he "began to feel that maybe I had found my footing enough as a musician to be able to share the same place" with King.
King let out a loud laugh over that quote.
"He's crazy. My God, the man plays more than I'll ever play," says King, noting that he considers Clapton the greatest Rock & Roll guitarist there is. "He maybe doesn't do it my way, but he plays more than I'll ever play."
Riding with the King gave King, whose real name is Riley B. King, something that he never had in his illustrious career: his first Top 10 album. King says he first met Eric Clapton in the early 1960s and immediately established a friendship with the Rock guitarist. Over the years he had on several occasions thought about doing an album with Clapton. But one thing kept him from ever broaching the subject.
"You don't impose on a friend -- I never would say it," King says.
But one event in 1997 put the idea of a collaborative album back on the front burner. In recording Deuces Wild, a CD on which King recorded songs with a variety of big names from the Rock & Roll world, he and Clapton cut a version of "Rock Me Baby."
"Finally one night, on the Larry King Show, I was watching, and he was being interviewed, and Larry asked him what would he like to do?" King recalls. "And he said, 'I'd like to do a CD with B.B. King,' and I almost fell out of my chair. So I called my manager, Sidney Seidenberg, and I said, 'Sid, Eric said he'd love to record with me. You better call and see if that's true.' "
King openly credits his collaboration with Clapton on Riding with the King with expanding his audience and putting his career on a new level.
"It opened many doors that hadn't been opened before," King says. "I'll tell you a little secret. I used to say my prayers at night and say 'Thank God, thank my manager, thank all the people that were involved in helping me do what I've done.'
"Now I go 'Thank God, thank Eric," King continues, not bothering to suppress a laugh, "and the rest of the people and everybody that had something to do with it. But (Riding with the King) really was a godsend for me."
Today, the 76-year-old King shows no signs of easing back on the pace of his career. He still plays some 250 shows each year and continues to record new albums on a regular basis. Clearly he doesn't need to maintain such a relentless pace. Even he admits that financially he doesn't need to tour as steadily. So why does he stay on the road most of the year instead of taking it easy and pursuing his fishing hobby at his favorite watering hole?
"If there was something I would like to do (I would), but I can't think of anything else," King says simply. "I could fish. But I wouldn't want to go fishing every day. I can't think of anything I'd like to do better than what I'm doing. But I think what I would like to say is this: I could have retired before I was 65. I had good management, and they taught me how to invest. I'm not rich, but I could live very well without ever working again."
Yet as King elaborates on his work ethic, it becomes clear there are other, more subtle motivations beyond his sheer love for live performance, including a sense of obligation and a basic enjoyment of the touring experience.
"I have a good band," says the native of Itta Bena, Miss., who came to Memphis in 1946 to pursue his Blues career. "And in order to keep a good band together, you've got to get work. So that causes us to have bills. So I have to work to pay for the bills. I think in the long run, it's fun. I get a chance to meet people all over the world. I make friends. It used to be like leaving Mississippi and going to Tennessee or Louisiana or Alabama or someplace. Now it's going to the various countries I play, and I feel the same way when I did leaving Mississippi to go to Memphis. In other words, a lot of these places are kind of familiar today, and we have a lot of friends here and there.
"It's kind of like a therapy for me. Just looking out of the bus windows and looking at the countryside between here and there, I call it a tonic that's good for whatever ails me."
B.B. KING headlines the B.B. King Blues Festival at Riverbend on Sunday. The event also features The Fabulous Thunderbirds and George Thorogood.
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