King of the Blues: The Rise and Reign of B.B. King

by Daniel de Visé

Overview

The first full and authoritative biography of an American—indeed a world-wide—musical and cultural legend.

“No one worked harder than B.B. No one inspired more up-and-coming artists. No one did more to spread the gospel of the blues.”—President Barack Obama

“He is without a doubt the most important artist the blues has ever produced.”—Eric Clapton

Riley “Blues Boy” King (1925-2015) was born into deep poverty in Jim Crow Mississippi. Wrenched away from his sharecropper father, B.B. lost his mother at age ten, leaving him more or less alone. Music became his emancipation from exhausting toil in the fields. Inspired by a local minister’s guitar and by the records of Blind Lemon Jefferson and T-Bone Walker, encouraged by his cousin, the established blues man Bukka White, B.B. taught his guitar to sing in the unique solo style that, along with his relentless work ethic and humanity, became his trademark. In turn, generations of artists claimed him as inspiration, from Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton to Carlos Santana and the Edge.

King of the Blues presents the vibrant life and times of a trailblazing giant. Witness to dark prejudice and lynching in his youth, B.B. performed incessantly (some 15,000 concerts in 90 countries over nearly 60 years)—in some real way his means of escaping his past. Several of his concerts, including his landmark gig at Chicago’s Cook County Jail, endure in legend to this day. His career roller-coasted between adulation and relegation, but he always rose back up. At the same time, his story reveals the many ways record companies took advantage of artists, especially those of color.

Daniel de Visé has interviewed almost every surviving member of B.B. King’s inner circle—family, band members, retainers, managers, and more—and their voices and memories enrich and enliven the life of this Mississippi blues titan, whom his contemporary Bobby “Blue” Bland simply called “the man.”

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780802158055
Publisher:	Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Publication date:	10/05/2021
Pages:	496
Sales rank:	160,368
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.70(d)

About the Author

Daniel de Visé is the author of the critically acclaimed Andy and Don: The Making of a Friendship and a Classic American TV Show and The Comeback: Greg LeMond, The True King of American Cycling, and a Legendary Tour de France, and coauthor of I Forgot to Remember: A Memoir of Amnesia. He shared a 2001 Pulitzer Prize for his journalism and has worked at the Washington Post and Miami Herald, among other newspapers. He lives in Maryland.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Chapter 1 Sharecropper 5

Chapter 2 On the Run 25

Chapter 3 Indianola Mississippi Seeds 43

Chapter 4 The Blues 67

Chapter 5 Memphis 83

Chapter 6 The Blues Boy 100

Chapter 7 Lucille 120

Chapter 8 On the Road 137

Chapter 9 Big Red 160

Chapter 10 Fallow 185

Chapter 11 Regal 200

Chapter 12 Revival 218

Chapter 13 Fillmore 233

Chapter 14 Mythology 253

Chapter 15 Live and Well 275

Chapter 16 Back in the Alley 293

Chapter 17 Moscow on the Mississippi 310

Chapter 18 Homecoming 333

Chapter 19 Lovetown 350

Chapter 20 Riding with the King 375

Chapter 21 A Golden Chain 398

Epilogue 416

Lyrics Referenced 421

Discography 423

The King's Court 429

Acknowledgments 433

Notes 437

Index 473

Editorial Reviews

★ 07/26/2021

Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist De Vise (The Comeback) amply demonstrates his masterful storytelling and research skills in this definitive look at legendary blues musician B.B. King (1925–2015). Informed by his conversations with “dozens of surviving friends and relatives, bandmates and producers,” De Vise provides an intimate portrait of a cultural luminary “whose achievements transcended his genre.” Born into poverty on a Mississippi plantation in 1925, King fell in love with music at a young age, when the reverend of his church taught him the three guitar chords at the center of every blues song he would ever perform. In 1946, he left his life as a sharecropper and tractor driver to perform in Memphis, where he became a regional star before signing with a talent agent and touring internationally for more than 50 years. But even after finding fame, De Vise recounts, King endured his fair share of trials, including a fatal accident involving his tour bus that killed a truck driver, and money disputes with his business manager. These hardships, however, only serve to underscore the tenacity that led King to become “the greatest living guitarist” alive and a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Even readers who aren’t fans of the blues will be engrossed by this nuanced look at an American icon. Agent: Deborah Grosvenor, Grosvenor Literary Agency. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

★ 08/01/2021

Author and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist de Visé (Andy and Don: The Making of a Friendship and a Classic American TV Show) has written the definitive biography of blues master Riley "B. B." King (1925–2015). Drawing material from King's autobiography, Blues All Around Me; Charles Sawyer's The Arrival of B. B. King: The Authorized Biography; and dozens of interviews, he begins with his subject's impoverished childhood in Mississippi and his backbreaking work as a young tenant farmer. The author identifies King's musical influences (blues guitarists Lonnie Johnson and T-Bone Walker; French guitarist Django Reinhardt) and details his stint at the Memphis radio station WDIA and his signing with Modern Records, which catapulted him onto the R&B charts. The book covers King's crossover popularity with white audiences, his rise to international fame during the late 1960s, his decline a decade later, and his subsequent resurgence. Though de Visé ploughs through a seemingly endless series of King's records, performances, love affairs, and gambling-induced IRS troubles, the narrative remains engaging. The book expertly interweaves King's music career into the U.S. social fabric, especially the civil rights movement. VERDICT With this fast-moving, informative, evenhanded, and exhaustive biography, de Visé vividly captures King's life.—David P. Szatmary, formerly at Univ. of Washington, Seattle

Library Journal

★ 2021-08-16
As blues royalty and one of the 20th century’s most influential musicians, B.B. King (1925-2015) has long deserved a well-considered biography that places his achievements in a cultural and historical context. This is it.

Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist de Visé deftly interweaves tales of American history, pop culture, racial relations, music theory, and much more to fully demonstrate King’s significance. Not only does the author show King at his highest moments—winning multiple Grammys and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, recording his most-acclaimed albums, opening the B.B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center in his hometown of Indianola, Mississippi—but also his lowest, including his final days, when he was bedridden and suffering from complications of his chronic diabetes. It’s a magnificent tale that de Visé reconstructs mostly in King’s own words, culled from his memoir and the hundreds of interviews he gave throughout his career. However, it is often when the author writes as an outsider about King’s life that the most poignant revelations come. Though King famously cultivated the belief that he had fathered 15 children, he was believed to be sterile. Almost as famously, King would rarely address racial injustice even though it affected him and his career deeply. De Visé, who lays out one indignity after another for King and his band because they were Black, wonders if “King’s anger remained deep inside, concealed behind the expressive eyes and the ancient stutter, where perhaps it had always lived.” As King himself once wrote, “Moving on is my method of healing my hurt and, man, I’ve been moving on all my life.” What de Visé does best, though, is assess the musical magic that King and his beloved guitar, Lucille, made and how their unique sound combination influenced blues and rock stars for generations.

The thrill is here, as B.B. King finally gets his due in this first meticulous account of his historic life.

Kirkus Reviews

Praise for King of the Blues:

Named a Best Arts Book of the Year by Library Journal

“A fluent read of a major artist’s evolution . . . de Visé has dived deeply into the world of an American master and discovered that the guitar god was mortal after all . . . The author is at his best when homed in on King’s sound.”—Preston Lauterbach, Wall Street Journal

“A comprehensive and unfiltered look at the complex musical giant . . . De Visé tells King’s fascinating story with great detail and fluid prose . . . King of the Blues helps encapsulate his incredible life and his enduring legacy.”—Jackson Clarion Ledger

“Adds flesh and blood to the standard cultural codification of King as icon. It presents a career full of ambition and a life informed by longing, with triumphs and setbacks, discrimination and canonization.”—Houston Chronicle

“A full-blown hero’s journey . . . Filled with interviews with King’s relatives, band members and managers, the resulting biography feels at once intimate and encyclopedic, offering a full picture of the man behind the myth.”—AARP

“B.B. King, who died in 2015 at age 89, gets the royal treatment from his biographer, and rightly so . . . Essential.”—David Wesley Williams, Chapter 16

“As blues royalty and one of the 20th century’s most influential musicians, B.B. King has long deserved a well-considered biography that places his achievements in a cultural and historical context. This is it . . . Interweaves tales of American history, pop culture, racial relations, music theory, and much more to fully demonstrate King’s significance . . . Magnificent . . . The thrill is here, as B.B. King finally gets his due in this first meticulous account of his historic life.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist De Visé amply demonstrates his masterful storytelling and research skills in this definitive look at legendary blues musician B.B. King . . . An intimate portrait of a cultural luminary . . . Even readers who aren’t fans of the blues will be engrossed by this nuanced look at an American icon.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“The definitive biography of blues master Riley ‘B.B.’ King . . . Engaging. The book expertly interweaves King’s music career into the U.S. social fabric, especially the civil rights movement. With this fast-moving, informative, evenhanded, and exhaustive biography, de Visé vividly captures King’s life.”—Library Journal (starred review)

“De Visé tells King’s story in the context of his swirling times, intertwined with profiles of historic people and events musical and otherwise. A fine portrait of an iconic musician.”—Booklist (starred review) 

“B.B. King was a marvelous man and an international ambassador for the blues. King of the Blues tells the extraordinary story of his life in great detail, and a wonderful story it is. A fitting tribute to a great artist.”—John Landis, director of The Blues Brothers, Animal House, Trading Places, and Michael Jackson’s Thriller

“Like hopping onboard B.B.’s tour bus for a ride straight to the heart of the blues. Told me about the B.B. I knew and a few other B.B.s as well. I loved them all.”—Shemekia Copeland, three-time Grammy-nominated Alligator Records recording artist

“The name B.B. King now resonates with longevity amongst blues lovers and music enthusiasts alike. With more than six decades of noteworthy expressions of a great American art form, B.B. King’s guitar playing and singing hold a strong place with an unmistakable sound of his professional and effervescent personality. Get a head start within these fine pages for an intimate trip with B.B. King’s lifetime attachment to creativity. B.B. is truly King of the Blues, oh yeah!”—Billy F. Gibbons, guitarist and singer, ZZ Top

“Mr. de Vis­é meticulously dives deep into why and how young Riley, who graced this planet from a world of extreme complications, was able through his talent, relentless drive and humility, to rise to the deserved title ‘King of the Blues.’ Get your records out and enjoy the read. I did!!”—Robert Cray, five-time Grammy-winning blues guitarist and singer-songwriter

“B.B. King, one of the great bluesmen of all time. Can any other person hold one note on the guitar and make it say so much? Daniel de Visé’s book on B.B. King is a great read.”—Joan Armatrading, three-time Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter and guitarist

“B.B. King was the stone truth, the man who took down home uptown and, yes, the undisputed king of the blues. This, his first full and authoritative biography, is both right on time and long overdue. Dan de Visé has done a solid for music lovers everywhere.”—Leonard Pitts, Jr., Pulitzer prizewinning national columnist and author

“De Visé writes beautifully. His command of narrative is compelling. The level of detail he amassed is awesome.”—Charles Sawyer, author of The Arrival of B.B. King: The Authorized Biography

“Extremely thoughtful, thorough and insightful.”—David Ritz, biographical collaborator with B.B. King, Ray Charles, and Aretha Franklin, and biographer of Marvin Gaye

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