B. B. King
On the day Riley B. King received the Kennedy Center Honors, he was being recognized alongside a roster of distinctions that had accumulated steadily over the course of his life. Known professionally as B. B. King, he was a United States citizen who worked in English and whose music belonged to the genres of blues and rhythm and blues.
Born on September 16, 1925, in Itta Bena and Berclair, King worked as a guitarist, singer, singer-songwriter, record producer, pianist, composer, and blues musician. The honors that came to him were numerous: induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Blues Hall of Fame, the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, the Kennedy Center Honors, the National Medal of Arts, the Library of Congress Living Legend designation, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
King died on May 14, 2015, in Las Vegas, at the age of eighty-nine. Of the recognitions he received, the Presidential Medal of Freedom — among the highest civilian honors conferred by the United States government — stands as a concrete measure of the regard in which he was held at the time of his death.
Quotes by B. B. King
B. B. King's insights on:
I've been married twice. Most women would rather not be married to a traveling blues singer.
I liked blues from the time my mother used to take me to church. I started to listen to gospel music, so I liked that. But I had an aunt at that time, my mother's aunt who bought records by people like Lonnie Johnson, Robert Johnson, Blind Lemon Jefferson, and a few others.
I have not been a good father, but no father has loved his children more. Like my father, I decided the best thing I could do for my kids was work and provide. Fortunately, I've been able to do that. Unfortunately, my work was on the road, and that's meant a life of one-nighters.
I would sit on the street corners in my hometown of Indianola, Mississippi, and I would play. And, generally, I would start playing gospel songs. People would come by on the street - you live in Time Square, you know how they do it - they would bunch up. And they would always compliment me on gospel tunes, but they would tip me when I played blues.
Whenever I'm in Kansas City, I think back to all the jazz-blues greats who played the blues here - like Count Basie, Charlie Parker and Jay McShann. I watched those guys jam in different places and heard a lot of things - but I couldn't do what they did. They were too good.
Growing up on the plantation there in Mississippi, I would work Monday through Saturday noon. I'd go to town on Saturday afternoons, sit on the street corner, and I'd sing and play.
My mother was a very beautiful lady, I thought. She was very good to me. I guess - she died when I was nine and a half, but if she had lived, I probably wouldn't be trying to play guitar. She wanted me to be known, but as something else. Not a guitar player.
My last divorce was in '68. What made it come to a head was a promise. See, I had promised her that the next year I wouldn't work as much. But then I got in trouble with the IRS, and I had to continue working just as much to pay the government. So she said I lied, which is something I never did.
I was a singing disc jockey who heard every type of music there was - and loved it all.