1949–2005 , in the 1980s In the late 1940s and early 1950s, King was a part of the blues scene on
Beale Street. "Beale Street was where it all started for me," he said. He performed with
Bobby Bland,
Johnny Ace and
Earl Forest in a group known as
the Beale Streeters. According to King and Joe Bihari, one of the founders of
Modern Records and its subsidiaries,
Ike Turner introduced King to the
Bihari brothers while he was a talent scout for them. Before his RPM contract, King had debuted on
Bullet Records by issuing the single "Miss Martha King" (1949), which did not chart well. "My very first recordings [in 1949] were for a company out of Nashville called Bullet, the Bullet Record Transcription company," King recalled. "I had horns that very first session. I had
Phineas Newborn on piano; his father played drums, and his brother,
Calvin, played guitar with me. I had
Tuff Green on bass,
Ben Branch on tenor sax, his brother, Thomas, on trumpet, and a lady trombone player. The Newborn family were the house band at the famous Plantation Inn in West Memphis." In 1949, King began recording songs under contract with Los Angeles-based
RPM Records, a subsidiary of Modern.
Sam Phillips, who later founded
Sun Records, produced many of King's early recordings. King assembled his band, the B.B. King Review, under the leadership of Millard Lee. The band initially consisted of native-Houston trumpet player
Calvin Owens and Kenneth Sands (also trumpet), Lawrence Burdin (alto saxophone),
George Coleman (tenor saxophone),
Floyd Newman (baritone saxophone), Millard Lee (piano),
George Joyner (bass) and Earl Forest and Ted Curry (drums). King hired
Onzie Horne, a trained musician, to be an arranger and assist him with his compositions. By his admission, King could not play chords well and always relied on
improvisation. King supported his recordings by touring across the United States with performances in major theaters in cities such as Washington, D.C., Chicago, Los Angeles, Detroit, and St. Louis, as well as numerous gigs in small clubs and
juke joints in the southern United States. During one show in
Twist, Arkansas, a brawl broke out between two men and caused a fire. He left the building with the rest of the crowd but ran back in to get his guitar. He said he later learned that the two men were fighting over a woman named Lucille. He named the guitar
Lucille as a reminder not to fight over women, or run into any more burning buildings. Following his first
Billboard Rhythm and Blues charted number one, "
3 O'Clock Blues" (February 1952), King became one of the most important names in
R&B music in the 1950s, amassing an impressive list of hits including "
You Know I Love You", "Woke Up This Morning", "Please Love Me", "When My Heart Beats Like a Hammer", "Whole Lotta' Love", "You Upset Me Baby", "
Every Day I Have the Blues", "Sneakin' Around", "Ten Long Years", "Bad Luck", "
Sweet Little Angel", "On My Word of Honor", and "Please Accept My Love". This led to a significant increase in his weekly earnings, from about $85 to $2,500, with appearances at major venues such as the
Howard Theater in Washington and the
Apollo in New York, as well as touring the "
Chitlin' Circuit". 1956 became a record-breaking year, with 342 concerts booked and three recording sessions. That same year he founded his own record label, Blues Boys Kingdom, with headquarters at Beale Street in Memphis. There, among other projects, he was a producer for artists such as Millard Lee and Levi Seabury. From the late 1960s, his new manager, Sid Seidenberg, pushed him into a different type of venue as blues-rock performers like
Eric Clapton (once a member of
the Yardbirds and
Cream) and Paul Butterfield were bringing blues music to appreciative white audiences. King gained further visibility among rock audiences as an opening act on
the Rolling Stones'
1969 American Tour. He won a
Grammy Award in 1970 for his version of the song "
The Thrill Is Gone" which was a hit on both the Pop and R&B
charts.
Rolling Stone magazine listed it in the number 183 spot in their
500 Greatest Songs of All Time. King was inducted into the
Blues Hall of Fame in 1980, the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987, and the National Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame in 2014. In 2004, he was awarded the international
Polar Music Prize which is given to artists "in recognition of exceptional achievements in the creation and advancement of music." From the 1980s to his death in 2015, he maintained a highly visible and active career, appearing on numerous television shows and sometimes performing 300 nights a year. In 1988, he reached a new generation of fans with the single "
When Love Comes to Town", a collaborative effort with the Irish band
U2 on their
Rattle and Hum album. In 1998, King appeared in
The Blues Brothers 2000, playing the part of the lead singer of the Louisiana Gator Boys along with
Eric Clapton,
Dr. John,
Koko Taylor and
Bo Diddley. In 2000, he and Clapton teamed up again to record
Riding With the King which won a
Grammy Award for Best Traditional Blues Album. Discussing where he took the Blues, from "dirt floor, smoke in the air" joints to grand concert halls, King said the Blues belonged everywhere beautiful music belonged. He successfully worked both sides of the commercial divide, with sophisticated recordings and "raw, raucous" live performances. The tour was partly supported by Northern Irish guitarist,
Gary Moore, with whom King had previously toured and recorded. It started in the United Kingdom and continued with performances at the
Montreux Jazz Festival and in Zürich at the Blues at Sunset. During his show in Montreux at the Stravinski Hall, he jammed with
Joe Sample,
Randy Crawford,
David Sanborn,
Gladys Knight, Leela James, Andre Beeka, Earl Thomas,
Stanley Clarke,
John McLaughlin,
Barbara Hendricks and
George Duke. , Toronto, in May 2007 In June 2006, King was present at a memorial of his first radio broadcast at the Three Deuces Building in
Greenwood, Mississippi where the Mississippi Blues Commission erected an official marker as part of the
Mississippi Blues Trail. The same month, a groundbreaking was held for a new museum, dedicated to him, in
Indianola, Mississippi. The
B.B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center opened on September 13, 2008. In late October 2006, King recorded a concert album and video entitled
B.B. King: Live at his B.B. King Blues Clubs in Nashville and Memphis. The video of the four night production featured his regular band and captured his shows as he performed them nightly around the world. Released in 2008, they were his first performances in more than a decade to be documented with a live album release. In 2007, King played at Eric Clapton's second
Crossroads Guitar Festival and contributed the songs "Goin' Home", to ''
Goin' Home: A Tribute to Fats Domino'' (with
Ivan Neville's DumpstaPhunk) and "One Shoe Blues" to
Sandra Boynton's children's album
Blue Moo, accompanied by a pair of sock puppets in a music video for the song. In the summer of 2008, King played at the
Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival in
Manchester, Tennessee where he was given a
key to the city. Later that year, he was inducted into the
Hollywood Bowl Hall of Fame. and King singing "
Sweet Home Chicago" on February 21, 2012 He performed at the
Mawazine festival in
Rabat, Morocco on May 27, 2010. In June 2010, he played at the Crossroads Guitar Festival with
Robert Cray,
Jimmie Vaughan, and
Eric Clapton. He also contributed to
Cyndi Lauper's album
Memphis Blues, which was released on June 22, 2010. In 2011, King played at the
Glastonbury Music Festival, and in the
Royal Albert Hall in London where he recorded a concert video.
Rolling Stone ranked him at No. 6 on its 2011 list of the
100 greatest guitarists of all time. On February 21, 2012, King was among the performers of "In Performance at the
White House: Red, White and Blues" during which President
Barack Obama sang part of "
Sweet Home Chicago". King recorded for the debut album of rapper and producer
Big K.R.I.T. who also hails from Mississippi. On July 5, 2012, King performed a concert at the
Byblos International Festival in Lebanon. On May 26, 2013, he appeared at the
New Orleans Jazz Festival. On October 3, 2014, after completing his live performance at the House of Blues in Chicago, a doctor diagnosed King with dehydration and exhaustion and the eight remaining shows of his ongoing tour had to be canceled. King did not reschedule the shows, and the House of Blues show would be the last before he died in 2015. == Equipment ==