The blues guitar institution B.B. King died yesterday in Las Vegas at the age of 89. Born Riley B. King to a family of sharecroppers in Itta Bena, Mississippi in 1925, the great-grandson of slaves, he would go on to wealth and glory, becoming effectively synonymous with his chosen instrument and idiom—according to the NY Times obit, "B.B." stood for "Blues Boy." Over the course of a career that spanned more than 70 years, King released over 40 albums and played innumerable shows—his most recent tour was last October, and was only cut short due to illness. People who write about music love to throw the word "legend" around, but let's be serious: They don't make 'em like B.B. King anymore, and with his passing, a lot more than just the thrill is gone.
Whether or not you're a fan of the nimble, urbane, single-string electric lead blues style of which he was the most prominent practitioner for at least five decades (or the brassy trappings of his latter-day presentation), it's worth taking a moment to note the line that stretched from the Mississippi Delta, through the players and singers who inspired him—like Blind Lemon Jefferson, T. Bone Walker, and Sonny Boy Williamson—and his rougher-edged contemporaries (Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf among them), right into his impossibly dexterous hands, and all the history encoded within it. “Among Riley’s vivid childhood memories,” wrote Charles Sawyer, King's authorized biographer, in 1980's The Arrival of B.B. King, “was the sight of a black man’s body electrocuted by the State of Mississippi and placed out on the courthouse steps for public viewing.”
King inspired plenty of talented musicians in his turn (some of whom were straight-up imitators who went on to more lucrative fame and fortune in the rock'n'roll era). That's an old song, too. But there's no mistaking that the blues that King was born into—not merely as a foundational element in other music, or an aesthetic, or an idea, or a "vibe," or a spur for guilty white music writers to tickle their mythos glands until they express, but as a distinct and diversified form born of black American ingenuity, invention, and artistry—continues to fade into antiquity, despite its legion of designated mourners. It's worth taking a moment to attempt to imagine some fraction of how far B.B. King had to travel from Itta Bena in 1925 to Las Vegas in 2015, and how much the culture we all inhabit was transformed and enlarged by the music he dedicated his life to playing.
Tributes and appreciations, meanwhile, are already pouring in and will continue to do so for some time. Damn straight.
