In Black America; Blues Legend B.B. King

Thanks for watching. From the Longhorn Radio Network, the University of Texas at Austin, this is in Black America. I've found that you do what you enjoy doing. You can't do it simply because somebody wants you to do it or you get paid to do it. Do it because you enjoy doing it.

Another thing, fast money in an illegal way doesn't stay with you. You may make money, money on top of money, but eventually you get busted. Once you get busted and if it's drugs, they take all your money, all your problems, everything you had and a little bit that you might have hidden in your shoebox when they get through it, the lawyers get through, the government or the authorities get through it, then the lawyers get the rest of it. So you wind up with nothing. I know I've had a couple of family members that's been involved and I know what happened, which I told them the same thing I'm telling the people on your show now. The best way, there is no limit now to what African Americans can do. It used to be you couldn't go to school here because somebody's standing in the door. So you can't have an education here, that's not anymore. Throughout the 1980s, as well as the 1970s, 60s and the 1950s, there's been only one king of the blues, Riley B. King, affectionately known as B. B. King.

Since B. B. started recording in the late 1940s, he has released over 50 albums, many considered blues classics. B. B. is first big break came in 1948 when he performed on Sonny Williams Radio program on station K. W. E. M. out of West Memphis. This led to steady engagement at the 16th Avenue Grill in West Memphis and later to a 10-minute spot on radio station W. D. I. A. Soon B. B. needed a catchy radio name. What started out is Bill Street Blues Boy was shortened to Blues Boy King and eventually B. B. King. King's middle initial B. is just that, it is not an abbreviation. Today, B. B. King is a seven-time Grammy Award winner and is considered the number one blues artist and the father of Rock n' Roll. I'm John L. Hanson Jr. and welcome to another edition of In Black America. This week, legendary blues master, B. B. King, in Black America. You're not free free now, baby, I'm free from your spell, I'm free free free now.

Everybody wants to know what I sing of this. People like, when they take vacation, they want to go someplace. When I take a vacation, I want to go home. So I'm a country boy, playing old country boy, every year for the last 25 years, every year. I go there every year and play free concert. Every year, the first weekend of June, I go back to my hometown and play for the kids free. I've been doing it for 25 years, and I enjoy it. I think what I'm trying to say to you is that being the country boy that I am, they got all saying you get to boy out of country, but you never get to country out of the boy. And I'm still like that and I'm kind of proud of it.

I like being just a regular guy, but I like to feel that I'm street smart as well. Although the blues hasn't traditionally found this audience via radio, B. B. King topped the R&B charts in the late 1950s and 60s with songs including 3 o'clock blues. You don't know me and week 16, part 1. In the 1970s, his crossover hit, The Thriller's Gone, introduced him to pop audiences and earned him his first Grammy award for best R&B vocal performance. Five more Grammy Awards followed. And in 1987, he earned the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and was inducted into Rock and Roll, Hall of Fame. Born on September 16, 1925 on a cotton plantation in Mississippi, B. B. King wanted to be a gospel singer, but realized he will make more money singing the blues. With his guitar and $2.50, he hitchhiked North to Memphis in 1947 to pursue his musical career. And the rest you can say is history.

B. B. distinctive style of combining the traditional blues, jazz, swing, and mainstream pop has made him an influence for other famous artists, like Mick Jagger, Eric Clapton, Vine Jovey, Sting, and you too. B. B's career has progressed from Chitlin's Circuit to performances at some of the most prestigious concert halls and festivals the world over. Recently, I caught up with him in Austin, Texas a few days after his 7th birthday. B. B. wants to start the program off by saying Happy Birthday. Well thank you very much, my gosh, you make me feel so good. How did you spend your birthday?

Did you spend it working? I spent it working in Atlanta, Georgia. I thought about James Brown. I had to be a good. Yeah, I spent it in Atlanta, Georgia working and had a good time. After these many years that you believe in the beginning that you were going to be so successful? No, I did not. You know, to be honest with you, I never thought that I would be a blues singer period. I started out to be a gospel singer, never to be a blues singer. But the tips on the streets when people would request a gospel tune, they would thank me very polite, lit pat me on the shoulders and say, keep it up, son, you're going to be good one day, but they didn't tip. People asked me saying a blues would always tip me off of me a beer or something. So that's how I really started in, but I thought it would be popular as a gospel singer, but not to the way it is today. I also understand you spend some time behind the mic as a disc jockey. Well, you said it right behind the mic. To be a disc jockey like you guys is so much different, you know, automation and everything. You push in a CD or something and the machine queues it up for all you guys.

I had to have what they call Ampex 600 and you had real and real, and that was. So I was no disc jockey. I was just a guy, as you said, sitting behind the microphone. Once you decided or made the switch or figured out that you could probably make more money or live and play in blues than gospel, what gave you the impetus to really put forth the effort to be a great blues and guitarist? Well, I guess being the Virgo that I am, whatever I do, I try to do the best that I can do. Now, I got lucky. I got a manager, which I think is the best in the world for me, named Sid Sidenberg, and then I got a great record company, MCA, the great agency associated with great public relations people, and the greatest band ever for me, and a little talent myself. And I think all that together made a pretty good ingredients, you know. So that made me, you know, feel like I was kind of on the way. For those who are listeners that don't know the story of how you happen to name your good

car, Lucille, could you tell us that story? Well, it seems so far back and having these pretty ladies around me, you really messing things up for me today. But anyway, back in 1949, I used to play this place in twist Arkansas. Twist Arkansas for people that are not familiar with it, it was about 45 miles northwest of Memphis, Tennessee. So I used to play there full wall in, as they call it, you know, for what money I get coming in. I used to play there quite often, especially weekends, and I used to get quite cold and twist. And when it did get cold, it takes something like a big garbage pill, set it in the middle of a dance floor, half fillet with kerosene, they would light that fuel and that's what we use for heat. The building was not that large, it was about, oh, you could get about 200 people in that truck then. But sometimes, during the run of the night, we may have 300 or 400 people because they come in and go out. Anyway, with this container sitting in the middle of the floor, one, and people used, we used

it for heat, but people dancing, dancing around, and never disturbed it. So one night, two guys started to fight in, and one knocked the other one over on this container. When they did, it spilled on the floor. When they spilled on the floor, already burning, it looked like a river far. Everybody started running for the front door, including BB King. Back door was nailed up, keep people from sneaking in. You know about those twists. Anyway, when they got on the outside, they didn't realize I'd left them to get tough. I went back for it. When I did, the building was a wooden building burning rapidly and started to collapse around me. So almost lost my life trying to save my guitar. The next morning, we found that these two guys was fighting, was fighting about a lady that worked in a little nightclub. I never did meet her, but I learned that her name was Lucille. Her name was guitar Lucille, to remind me, never to do a thing like that again. Think you can get another guitar, but not another BB King. How did you happen to come up with that BB King sound that's certain, the real you have when you pick your guitar?

Well, when I was a young guy, in school, I used to study a lot. My teacher used to set me down and say, wait, you got time. So I think that when I started to play, my thoughts along the line of taking my time seeing what I said was the same thing on playing the guitar. It's sort of like a story I once heard about some animals that were these animals that could climb a tree. It was up eating grapes. Fox came along later and saw him up there and said, hey, guys, throw down some grapes. See, if you want some grapes, climb up and get them. Fox knew he couldn't climb, so he said, well, that's all right, the problem is sour anyway. That's the way I was about speed playing. I could never play very fast, get my ideas to work. So I think that I practiced quality and not quantity. What was it like that first recording date that you had in the studio? I didn't know nothing about it, man, after I got through recording the funny thing, I'd

never heard myself talk. I didn't know what I sound like, you know, singing. So when they got ready to play it back, I said to one of the guys, when you're going to play the one, we're just finished. And it was us already. I had Ben Branch on 10th saxophone. You probably heard that name Ben Branch because he worked a lot with Operation Push family for me, and I had a lady, a trumpet on his name, Sammy Jet. And the trumpet player was Ben Branch's brother, Thomas Branch, and I had the finest newborns. People later started to call him Phineas, but finest newborns, that's really why. I had finest newborns on keyboard, his brother Calvin on guitar, his father on drums, so he was finest senior, finest junior, and his brother on guitar. And the bass player was tough thing, who was the band leader, and that was my first recording.

So you see, I didn't have just two, three people, pieces like some people seem to think. I had a full man for which time I recorded. Being from Detroit, I used to sneak in and hear you play at Felt's Lounge, but since that time you've grown in popularity and you're paying big concert halls. Do you still get the intimacy with the crowd playing in large venues? Oh yes, more so in a way, because usually now the equipment, the sounds, is better. It's so funny that you would say that in the larger halls, I remember reading a piece from Mr. Wilson that used to write for The New York Times, and he said, BB King 25 overnight success. BB King 25 year overnight success. And it's all sort of funny, but what he was talking about all the other nights of that play was in the small places, like Felt's Lounge and so on. So finally, we decided that we could make it in some of the larger venues, and it's been

good. Do you find the young artists still having appreciation for the blues, particularly African American artists? Are we losing something that has been hours over the decades? Well, to be honest with you, I never really had it. I never had it from the beginning. The young blacks, and when I started out, was my age and older, which was my fans. Usually they was my age and older, so when I was 18, they were 18. As I grew older, they grew older. And now it's a few of them, a very small amount of African Americans that seem to still, I'm talking about that's younger, that seems, when you mention blues to them, I guess it's almost like being black, mentioning black. But to be a blues player, you're like being black twice. You're black because you are black, and then you're black because you're saying the blues which puts you another strike below.

Just me sad though, because as I travel all over the world, I find that the people, not only Caucasian, Asians, any place that we go, usually, are quite happy to see us, happy to hear about us. But it's sort of sad to me from time to time, even my own children, I talked to them about it some time, I remember once, I took one of my sons to see the movie, Lady Day. And so he was very sad coming back and said, did that really happen? Would people live like that? It's a boy you living like that now, right now. And then I didn't really hold it against him because I figured that maybe I've slipped somewhere. I didn't tell him all the things maybe I should have. One of the sad things that bothered me now, it's almost like it's across the board, like if you and I was getting ready to sing a piece and we said, one, two, three, play, you

know. If I go to any hotel, any city, and usually when I meet an Afro-American, a young Afro-American, oh, my mother's gonna die, I see BB King, my father's gonna die, what about him? So you get this, I get it in every city. I get it every place I go. And I finally start to learn that they're not really putting me down or they don't mean to put me down, but what they saying does. And so it sort of hurts, but now I've started to think of it this way, this is their way of saying to me that they have family members that like me. But usually the whites and the other ethnic groups of different colors, they will say, oh, BB King, may I have your autograph please? Afro-American, may I have one for my mother, please?

My grandmother just loves you, give me one of those. So it hurts that you seem like you're loved by everybody, that's except your own people. You've jammed with any number of musicians, what have been the most enjoyable performances you've had? Well, that's sort of hard and you could get me in trouble to even answer, but I'll try. One of my greatest experiences has been jammed and has been with my dear friend and my favorite singer, Bobby Blan. I think that'll give me out of trouble. That was a good live recording. The other thing is so funny, when we first recorded together for the first time, we had a critic to write, I think it was the Rolling Stone, and he said, whatever we was doing before we did that, we should go back and start doing it again. And not long after that album was platinum, so I wrote them and told them whoever that critic was, use them on the next album.

It's a criticised indictment, but obviously his words were, you know, in reverse of what really was. And I can't even close my eyes, I can't find my baby, I'm not going to be satisfied anymore. Looked all around, and he fell. He was made as he kept him out.

All you know about the fun, my woman. You have a club in Memphis. What brought you to the point to open a nightclub to spot light blues artists? Well, in Memphis, when I left Mississippi, I was told in and still believed today that Memphis is the home of the blues. Now they talk about Chicago and all the other places. But to me, Memphis is the home of the blues. I didn't do like some of my friends that went to different places. I didn't go north. I just went to Memphis because I found that all of the facilities that I needed to record and to make it, if you will, was in Memphis.

Well, I used to walk real street then and used to be a record shop right there where our club is today called the home of the blues. I used to go in there quite often and wonder, you know, how could I do things? What would happen? Would it ever happen? I worked about seven miles. In other words, I lived about seven miles that seemed at least five miles away. I lived and I'd have to walk to town to my job at that time. And sometimes I had two jobs on the radio and this other job. And then sometimes I picked cotton. I had three jobs just to try to keep things making it in me, if you will. So when we did start to renovate or when they started to renovate, Bill Street, one of the thoughts were, would a club do any good there? Because they had a lot of them. Would one do good of BB King? Well, we got some investors and along with myself and my management, we all went in and came up with the BB King Blues Club.

Today we have two. We've got one in Hollywood and we've just broken ground for third when they're Nashville. They've been going well. How do you go about writing the songs in which you perform and also what have been some of the songs you particularly enjoy performing? I've wrote a lot of songs but I never thought that they were, you know, I didn't think of myself as a writer. I've written, I guess, 150 or 200 songs and more. I don't do much writing today. It seemed like to me now everybody that's writing or writing something that I would have asked them to write. They were going to write it, you know. I find so many people writing so many good songs. I just love them. But I don't even know the people. I just hear the song and say, yes, that one. That's it. How do I write? It's after times like now. I've met you and you got me fired up talking and I see the beautiful ladies over there.

And the surrounding is beautiful. So on my way home, my way to the hotel or something beautiful thoughts come in my mind. Then some other times and I went to the place where it wasn't so nice. I have thoughts about that too, you know, those things. So it's in bed sometime you might wake up with a thought or an idea. It's like you, you sometimes probably, a melody will come in your head or something you whistle or hum. You don't know what it is, what you got it from. But that's what you do. So that's what happens to me when I'm writing. Well, manager agents that are continuously looking out and always figure that, yes, it is fun. Yeah, it's always fun. No, for a lot of them, but some of them, for example, the M&M, we had to take quite a few takes, but the one for Wendy's and with Mr. Thomas, Dave Thomas, it didn't take many.

He's a very nice guy, very, very nice guy, very rich guy too. But he's a very nice man. I call him Mr. Thomas. Don't call me Dave. But with that much money and that much power, he's still Mr. Thomas to me. Before we run off time, Mr. King, BB King, any advice you would give to young artists and young African Americans or what it takes to succeed in life? Well, I've found that you do what you enjoy doing. Don't do it simply because somebody wants you to do it or you get paid to do it. Do it because you enjoy doing it. Fast money in an illegal way doesn't stay with you. You may make money, money on top of money, but eventually you get busted. And once you get busted, and if it's drugs, they take all your money, all your property, everything you had.

And a little bit that you might have hidden in your shoebox, when they get through it, the lawyers get through it. I mean, when the government or the authorities get through it, then the lawyers get the rest of it. So you're wiring up with nothing. I know I've had a couple of family members that's been involved and I know what happened, which I told them the same thing I'm telling the people on your show now. The best way, there is no limit now to what African Americans can do. It used to be you couldn't go to school here because somebody's standing in the door. You can't have an education here. That's not anymore. Today you can get it. Go ahead and get that education. Major in music or computers or something, but major in your music and mind and something else or take two majors if you have to, but get the education. There's one thing no one can take away from you. The more popular I get today, I have to say this to you. I'm in the Hollywood walk of fame.

It was done in Hollywood. I'm in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I've been honored with the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. I've been honored with the Handy Achievement Award. It's several. I've got, I think it's five honorary doctorate degrees, one from Tugaloo College, Mississippi. I was honored at Ole Miss. They don't usually give you an honorary degree, but they honor you, which is similar. But I have honorary degrees from Tugaloo, honorary degrees from Robe College, from Brooklyn School of Music and from Yale. But out of all of these honorary degrees, I should say, and the many things that have happened that honors me, I still missed the education I didn't get. I still think about the people that are going to college today, what's going then when I was missing school and sacrificing them to try and do what I'm doing.

Today, I wish to have. I would give up a whole lot of this just to have that education. So I say to them, an education no one can take from you. You've got an education you'll learn how to make money. You will learn how to make living. You'll learn how to make things better for not only you, but your surroundings. Education helped to do that. I think the world today, the one thing that we need more than anything else is education. Because I personally think that education would be the answer to most of the problems we have today. So I would say to this young person, if you have gone to school and you're in college, finish. If you haven't, you still have a chance. And when you get to play instrument, don't try to play like B.B. King, Eric Clapton, Kenny Burrell, or whomever if you're playing guitar, but learn the rudiments, learn all the progression, learn it all. Then you can play like yourself.

And then if somebody comes to town and wants you to play blues, play it. They want you to play jazz, play it. Because you can. So I would say to them, practice hard, study hard, the world today is US. You will make your mark in history. I'm talking to the young people. Make your mark in history. The world will have survived for a long time, and it will survive with or without you. But you can help it be so much better. Everybody wants to know what I sing of the blues. Blues legend, B.B. King. If you have a question or comment or suggestions asked if future in Black America programs, write us. Also let us know what radio station you heard us over. Views and opinions expressed on this program are not necessarily those of this station or the University of Texas at Austin.

I would like to thank Austin City Limits for their assistance in the reduction of this program. Until we have the opportunity again for a production assistant Chris Paulson and IBA technical producer Cliff Hoggrove, I'm John L. Hansen Jr. Thank you for joining us today and please join us again next week. Cassette copies of this program are available and may be purchased by writing in Black America Cassettes. Communication Building B, UT Austin, Austin, Texas, 78712. That's in Black America Cassettes, Communication Building B, UT Austin, Austin, Texas, 78712. From the University of Texas at Austin, this is the Longhorn Radio Network. I'm John L. Hansen Jr. Join me this week on in Black America.

Major in music of computers or something, but major in your music and mind and something else. So take two majors if you have to, but get the education. Education is one thing no one can take away from it. Blues legend BB King this week on in Black America.