Blues icon King remains relevant into his 80s

When 12-year-old Riley B. King picked up a guitar for the first time, FDR was president, the Depression gripped the U.S., and the black student who couldn’t get on the whites-only school bus had to walk five miles to class.

The year was 1938, the place rural Mississippi, and young Riley, left to fend for himself after his mother died, was making $15 a month, “and glad to get it” driving a tractor.

He asked his boss for a salary advance to buy his first guitar, and though King’s initial interest was gospel, he learned to play the blues because he could make more money strumming blues songs on street corners.

In the late 1940s, King moved to Memphis to work as a musician. To help pay the bills, he took a job as a singer and DJ for radio station WDIA, earning the nickname Blues Boy King. Soon that became B.B. King.

More than 70 years after getting that first guitar, King is still touring. The 83-year-old bluesman brings his band to the Wells Fargo Center on Tuesday.

At press time some tickets remained, but WFC’s Rick Bartalini said he expected a sellout. “That shows he’s still as relevant as he ever was,” Bartalini said.

In a career that’s spanned seven decades, King has recorded some 50 albums, won 15 Grammys, performed at the White House, and ranked third, below Jimi Hendrix and above Eric Clapton, on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of Top 100 guitarists.

King began touring relentlessly during the 1950s and ’60s, saying he had to hit the road hard because his songs received little radio airplay. His big break came when the Rolling Stones made King the opening act on their 1969 tour. By 2003, he’d played well over 15,000 shows, according to King biographer Charles Sawyer.

While King’s growing legion of fans is thrilled he’s still touring, he leaves them wondering why he maintains his rigorous schedule, which takes him from California to Europe over the next three months.

“Because I don’t have the money not to work,” King told the BBC last month. “When you come out of the cotton fields, you have no business sense ... And all that you don’t know about, you don’t get.”

Yet King’s playing and storytelling suggest he still loves the limelight and is as committed as ever to his craft. In a recent concert in Oakland, King brought the crowd to its feet with blistering guitar solos on his signature song, “The Thrill is Gone.”

“He still has a love for the music,” says Bill Bowker, who hosts a blues show Sunday evenings on local radio station KRSH. “His recent album (2008’s Grammy-winning ‘One Kind Favor’) is one of his best in years.”

King’s voice has become a bit gravelly, but he’s still commanding and sings powerfully. During his concerts, he no longer stands for the whole show: he sits regally while playing his black Gibson guitar, which he calls “Lucille.”

The name came from a 1949 show in Arkansas that ended when two men got in a fight, knocked over a kerosene heater and set the club on fire. King ran back into the burning building, risking his life to retrieve his guitar, Sawyer writes in “The Arrival of B.B. King.”

Later King learned the woman that the men were fighting over was named Lucille and he gave his guitar that name to remind him never to run into a fire or fight over a woman.

The opening track of “One Kind Favor” is Blind Lemon Jefferson’s “See That My Grave Is Kept Clean.” Jefferson, a blues pioneer and hero of King’s, has been largely forgotten, and King laments that his grave isn’t marked by a stone.

Some may view “Favor” as King’s swan song, a plea to remember him and care for his legacy. That heritage is preserved at the B.B. King Museum in his hometown of Indianola, Miss., and in the hearts of his legions of fans.

But King isn’t looking back. Though the burly entertainer has been battling Type 2 diabetes for two decades, he remains vital, energized by the music he loves and touring as long as he can cradle Lucille and make her sing.

Michael Shapiro can be reached at michaelshapiro@yahoo.com.