![]() ![]() “I got to audition for Sonny Boy, it was one of the Ivory Joe Hunter songs called ‘Blues of Sunrise.’ Sonny Boy had been working out a little place called the 16 th Street Grill down in West Memphis. Inspired by Sonny Boy Wiliamson’s radio show, young Riley moved back to Memphis in 1948. The sharecropper’s son first went to Memphis in 1946 and stayed with his cousin Bukka White, but soon returned to Indianola to work as a tractor driver. King became known, sought to change all that. Plantation first, that’s always first.” But it was not long before The Beale Street Blues Boy, as Riley B. When I got big enough to know about it, I asked my dad one day, ‘why is it that you named me after Mr O’Riley, why did you leave the O off?’ He said you didn’t look Irish enough!”Īccording to BB King, “Any time you’re born on a plantation you have no choice. “He was named Jim O’Riley my dad and Mr O’Riley were such good friends, he named me after him, but he left the O off. He was named Riley after the Irishman who owned the plantation on which his parents lived and worked. King is the son of Alfred and Nora Ella King and he was born in Indianola, deep in the heart of the Mississippi Delta in 1925. As a little kid, blues meant hope, excitement, pure emotion.“ B.B. “It angers me how scholars associate the blues strictly with tragedy. King’s still got it check out 2008’s One Kind Favor he recorded with producer T-Bone Burnett – it’s how the Blues should be played. ![]() Some decade by decade highlights include 1968’s Blues on Top Of Blues, Together For The First Time, his album with his old friend Bobby ‘Blue’ Bland from 1974, Blues ‘n’ Jazz from 1983 and Blues on the Bayou from 1998. ![]() Live at the Apolloreleased in 1990 is another classic recording. Among the best are Live At Cook County Jail, from 1971 and Live in Japan – which despite being recorded the same years, offers a very different picture. With a career spent largely on the road, it is unsurprising that many of his best albums are in fact live recordings. It highlights the many and varied albums that B.B. King, is a fitting tribute to a man who has had the longest recording career of any Blues artist. The recent 10 cd box set Ladies and Gentleman, Mr B.B. It includes signature pieces, some of his earliest recordings including his debut, ‘Miss Martha King’, seminal songs like ‘Sweet Little Angel’ (supposedly about Etta James) and live cuts including ‘How Blue Can You Get’ from Live At the Regal – arguably the greatest live Blues recording ever. ![]() King so great is through the OST to the film The Life of Riley. The perfect place to begin to understand what makes B.B. He has always had a knack for connecting with people, whether from behind the microphone as a DJ on WDIA in Memphis or from the stage while playing his beloved Lucille. King began recording in the early 1950s in Memphis Tennessee and almost immediately began to connect with his audiences. B.B.King, born deep in the heart of the Mississippi Delta, B.B. ![]()
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