Riley “BB” King (September 16, 1925 – May 14, 2015)
B.B. King, 15-time Grammy Award winner, member of the Rock and Roll and Blue Foundation halls of fame, has passed at 89. Lucille has been widowed.
B.B., a name morphed from his Disc Jockey name at WDIA, Beale Street Blues Boy, has been a resounding voice in blues since the early 40s. His style, and Lucille, are some of the most famous names in blues.
The story of Lucille:
Lucille’s beginnings date to 1949, when King, then in his early 20s, was performing at a nightclub in Twist, Arkansas, in the dead of winter. To heat the cold room, King recalled in a video interview, “they would take something that looked like a big garbage pail, half fill it with kerosene, light that fuel [and] set it in the middle of the dance floor.” All well and good, but on this night, a fight broke out between two men, and the pail was knocked over. “It spilled on the floor, it looked like a river fire,” the guitarist said. “And everyone started to run for the front door, including B.B. King.”
The blueseman managed to make it to safety outside — only to realize he had left his guitar behind. He raced back inside to retrieve it even as the wooden building, he said, “started to fall in around me.” The next day, he learned that two men had died in the blaze and that the fight that had set off the tragic chain of events had been over a woman who worked at the club. Her name was Lucille.
B.B., who claimed he “almost lost [his] life” rushing back into the nightclub, christened his guitar after her, he said, “to remind me never to do a thing like that again.”
