B.B. King would be 100 years old today had he lived!

[elvis4life]

https://memphismagazine.com/features/co ... or-a-king/

September 15, 2025 8:00 AM

A Centennial Fit for a King
Gone but never forgotten: the “Beale Street Blues Boy.”

by Frank Murtaugh

Anniversaries are in the air. September 16th will be celebrated in Memphis — and anywhere in the world where listening to the blues brings the opposite — as the centennial of B.B. King’s birth. Lest we forget just how grand this King’s influence was, recall that he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987 (the institution’s second class) while still very much in his prime and at the tender age of 62. He influenced this city’s “other” King (his given name: Elvis Presley), not the other way around. Fittingly, B.B. King’s statue stands proudly a few feet from Presley’s in Downtown’s Tennessee Welcome Center.

What is a century of impact? And why do the nice, round numbers (especially when there are two zeroes) matter? My wife and I saw King perform precisely once, on March 20, 2003, in the Beale Street club that carries his name. It was a profound experience, to say the least, one of the very few times I’ve actually felt goose bumps form when a legend takes his stage. (Others: Mikhail Baryshnikov at the Germantown Performing Arts Center in 1997 and Michael Jordan at The Pyramid in 2001.) The intimacy of a club setting magnifies the look and sound of a music titan, and I’m grateful, here 22 years later, for my one night with “Blues Boy.” So yes, the 100th-anniversary reminder of his lifetime also lifts my spirits, and surely those of countless others who had an unforgettable “one night.”

I returned to Memphis in time to attend King’s funeral procession down Beale Street. And again, my thought at the time was about impact, how the right kind outlives the second date in our obituary. Will B.B. King be celebrated on the bicentennial of his birth, in 2125? Let’s hope so, and here’s to the human race getting there with perhaps less acrimony than we feel globally today.

On the subject of Rock and Roll Hall of Famers, September 29th will mark 90 years since Jerry Lee Lewis arrived on the planet, surely shaking his delivery room by one measure or another. You’ll recall Elvis hitting 90 years in spirit last January. (Sadly, we’ll mark 50 years since Presley’s passing in less than two years.)

Back to B.B. King and my current reflection. I happened to be in Las Vegas on May 14, 2015, when King died in that very city. A pair of dear friends were renewing their wedding vows after twenty years . . . and with a faux Michael Jackson(!) as their officiant. Among the few American music stars as famous as B.B. King, Jackson had already been gone six years, having died at, yep, age 50 in 2009. I recall wondering at the time if a B.B. King impersonator might marry a future couple or two, knowing fully that “The Thrill Is Gone” will appear on playlists just as long as Thriller survives. That would be forever.

I returned to Memphis in time to attend King’s funeral procession down Beale Street, at the time a short walk from the Contemporary Media office building. And again, my thought at the time was about impact, how the right kind outlives the second date in our obituary. Will B.B. King be celebrated on the bicentennial of his birth, in 2125? Let’s hope so, and here’s to the human race getting there with perhaps less acrimony than we feel globally today. (Has there ever been a better time to sing the blues?) What goes without saying: B.B. King’s tunes will hit the right notes as long as there are anniversaries to count.

In 2020, shortly after the death of Eddie Van Halen, Rolling Stone published its ranking of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time. B.B. King landed at number six, behind only Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Keith Richards, and Jeff Beck. (Ahead of Chuck Berry and two slots ahead of Van Halen.) “He plays in shortened bursts,” wrote ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons, choosing the present tense for his profile, “with a richness and robust delivery. . . . It’s so identifiable, so clear, it could be written out.” How fortunate we all are that King’s life was more than a shortened burst, and that he spent so much of that life in Memphis, Tennessee.

We are more than the anniversaries we celebrate, be they 100 or 50, or somewhere in between. But what a nice reminder those round numbers provide. Relish those who bring you pleasure, especially while the thrill is here.

https://www.memphisflyer.com/a-century-of-b-b-king

A Century of B.B. King
From Memphis to Indianola, pilgrims are flocking to honor the bluesman’s 100th birthday.

Alex Greene
4:00 a.m. Sep. 10, 2025

It was a rainy day in May, 10 years ago, when B.B. King made his last trip down Beale Street. His fame was great enough by then that the funeral procession was captured by PBS’ American Masters series, which still features the footage online. Rodd Bland, son of another Beale Street star, Bobby “Blue” Bland, walked along with King’s beloved guitar, Lucille, cradled in his arms, all to the joyous wail of the Mighty Souls Brass Band, as the hearse rolled slowly under the neon sign of B.B. King’s Blues Club and on down the street where young Riley B. King had once arrived seeking his fortune.

Having found that fortune after many hardships, then passing away at the ripe age of 89, King was now making that journey again in reverse. Leaving Beale, the funeral procession headed south. At the state line, police ceremonially transferred guardianship of the motorcade from Tennessee to Mississippi officers, and on they drove to Indianola. Though he was born in the country, closer to Itta Bena, he spent his teen years in Indianola and often called that his hometown. When King died in 2015 it had already been 10 years since the B.B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center’s groundbreaking there. By day’s end, he would be buried on those grounds.

That day of mourning and celebration thus honored two pole stars of King’s life: the town where he grew up, and the town where his artistic voice was born. And now, a century after his birth and 10 years since his death, both cities are celebrating his legacy in style.

100 Days of Blues

The festivities have already been going on around Indianola, with Mississippi Valley State University (in nearby Itta Bena) having hosted the 11th annual B.B. King Day of panel discussions on September 4th, followed by an all-star jam session at Club Ebony, where B.B. often played. This Saturday, September 13th, the venue will come to life again in spectacular fashion, as a live blues band accompanies a hologram of King. And on his actual birthday, September 16th, the museum will host a reception (and serve birthday cake). Meanwhile, the Bluff City has been celebrating since June 8th, which marked the launch of “100 Days of Blues” in venues all over town.

As Kevin Kane, president and CEO of Memphis Tourism, describes it, “We kicked it off with a big gospel brunch with the Tennessee Mass Choir at B.B. King’s Blues Club on a Sunday. And that was just huge. And then we are wrapping it up on Tuesday, September 16th, with a big celebration being led by B.B. King’s Blues Club, where they will be having music most of that day. So it’s been really a cool promotion. We just thought it would be a great way to get a conversation going, once again, about our musical legacy, and it certainly did that. Our stories were picked up literally all over the world, so it really kind of exceeded our expectations from that standpoint.”

The ongoing salutes to King go beyond performances. Through October 19th, the Stax Museum of American Soul Music is hosting the exhibit, “B.B. King in Memphis,” featuring never-before-seen photographs from King’s 1982 Labor Day Weekend concert at Mud Island Amphitheater, captured by Memphis photographer Alan Copeland. And the Withers Collection Museum & Gallery has unearthed some rare shots of King by Ernest C. Withers himself, featured in a dedicated exhibit.

Perhaps only in Memphis could one find something blues-related happening for 100 consecutive days. “The calendar was not that hard to fill,” says Kane, “because there is so much music in this area that we literally could find something every day for 100 days. A lot of destinations would really struggle [to find that many blues acts], but we were able to find something literally, I think, every single day.”

That’s no great surprise with a street like Beale in our midst, and naturally that’s where the party will be, with the club founded by King and local investor Tommy Peters at the heart of two days of activities. Peters, who died almost exactly four years ago due to complications from Covid-19, was a beloved figure on Beale and throughout Memphis, and the club he founded with King was one reason why. There was a deep personal bond between Peters and King that still reverberates through the city today as their shared legacy.

When Sara Fay Egan, Peters’ daughter, was growing up, B.B. King loomed large in her life. “I met him several times,” she recalls. “He came over to our house, and he and my dad were pretty close. They were both really, really hard-working. B.B., I think, was on the road more than 300 nights a year. He worked so hard, and my father worked so hard. They really bonded over their work ethic, their love for music, and their love for family. That’s what we’re really trying to home in on and continue.”

Their shared love of music will certainly be apparent on Beale this weekend and into next week, as B.B. King’s Blues Club hosts twin events to honor a century of its namesake’s impact. “On September 14th, we are having a free block party on Beale Street from 2 to 6 p.m.,” says Egan. “We really just wanted to get families down there, kids of all ages, to celebrate and learn a little bit about this wonderful history of the blues and what B.B. accomplished. And so playing music that day, we’ll have Eric Gales, who’s a Memphian, Rodd Bland, Mr. Sipp, Corey Lou, and the Stax Music Academy group. We love getting the kids involved, and really just want it to be a big birthday party. We’ll have face painters, balloon artists, the Whitehaven High School marching band, the Beale Street Flippers, and the Memphis Grizzline drum line.”

The club is also taking the extra step of moving their food service outside, hoping that locals will rediscover the magic of Beale. “I think that a lot of Memphians forget what’s right here in their backyard,” says Egan, “and we want them to come down and maybe do something they wouldn’t normally do: Go to Beale Street on a Sunday. It’s safe, bring your kids, and it’ll be fun. And the weather looks to be perfect. We’re going to have tents down the street and be selling food. And we’ve encouraged the other restaurants to do the same. We’ll have barbecue sandwiches, so people can eat outside, enjoying the weather, or if they want to come inside they can do that as well.”

Then on Tuesday, September 16th, as the sun begins to sink in the sky, B.B. King’s Blues Club will light up as if it’s New Year’s Eve, with a mini music festival of sorts. “It will be a seated dinner with a three-course meal, and as you dine you can watch the show,” Egan says. “David Porter, who needs no introduction, will be emceeing and hosting. And the bill includes Bobby Rush, Eric Gales, Carla Thomas, Jerome Chism with Hi Rhythm, Boo Mitchell, Southern Avenue, and D.K. Harrell.”

Even that partial listing is a jaw-dropper, offering some of the most stellar heirs, across three generations, of King’s legacy as both a singer and a guitarist. Rush, of course, is blues royalty and has won multiple Grammys in the field, while Gales’ 2022 album with Joe Bonamassa also garnered a Grammy nomination. Mitchell, Chism, and Hi Rhythm have been wowing audiences globally on several recent tours, with guitar wunderkind Lina Beach filling Teenie Hodges’ shoes admirably, and Carla Thomas’ cameo with that very group was a raucous, soulful highlight of the 2024 RiverBeat Music Festival. She’s recently appeared on the road with the group in Europe as the Take Me to the River All-Stars. Meanwhile, Southern Avenue will fit right in with the family vibes Egan mentioned, Family being the title of their latest and greatest album on Alligator Records.

Their Fathers’ Daughters

But yet another performer that night will take the cake in putting family front and center, or rather families, plural. That would be Shirley King, raised in B.B.’s father’s household in Memphis during the earliest years of B.B.’s career, as he toured the Chitlin’ Circuit. “My father bought that house after he made his first hit, ‘3 O’Clock Blues.’ He bought that house because he was always looking out for his father,” Shirley says. “It’s still there, at 2031 Hubert Avenue.” She is also unique among those B.B. counted as his children in having pursued the performing arts. “I’ve been doing this for 53 years,” Shirley says. “I danced for 21 years, and the other 32 I’ve just been singing blues and touring and doing my thing.”

When she moved to Chicago early in life, her father helped her connect with Willie Dixon (whose daughter became a good friend of Shirley’s). Yet there was a downside to her career as a show dancer: Shirley was often too busy with her own shows to see her father play as often as she wanted. “I don’t know too many kids of legendary people, but most of them cannot say they were out there performing on one side of the street while their father was performing on the other one,” she says.

Still, it’s been a minute since Shirley took the stage. After releasing her third album, Blues for a King, in 2020, Covid brought an abrupt hiatus to her performing career. Next Tuesday’s birthday concert will be one of her first appearances since then. “I have not done anything since 2020, I think, except for a couple things in 2023,” she says. “But this will be the first time that I’ve done any kind of B.B. King celebration.” Indeed, Shirley has always aimed to make a name for herself on her own merits, without leaning on her father’s name. But now, she says, “It’s an honor, the feeling I get from it. I want to do something my dad could be proud of.”

She’s used to having stellar players, her 2020 album boasting cameos by the likes of Duke Robillard, Elvin Bishop, and Steve Cropper. Having the B.B. King’s Blues Club All Stars backing her next week will be in keeping with that standard of excellence. Any father would surely be proud.

Yet another father’s pride will be beaming as well, as Sara Fay Egan well knows. “Back in the ’90s, the city came to John Elkington and my father, Tommy Peters, because Beale Street was really kind of rundown. There wasn’t much open. And so they came to Tommy to open B.B. King’s and help bring back Beale Street. And when it opened in ’91 it really became an anchor of the street. So this birthday is a reflection of both my father’s legacy and B.B. King’s legacy. Looking to the future, I feel like we’re at a crossroads again with Beale Street and Downtown.”

And at this crossroads, two heirs of those twin legacies will meet, as the daughter of Tommy Peters welcomes the daughter of B.B. King to the stage. Egan is relishing the opportunity, saying she and Shirley recall meeting “when we were really young. We remember being on his bus. And then when I was in college, I was on his bus again. So it’s kind of a full-circle moment now. B.B. was such a family man. He really took great care of his family, and he always had family members around. And there will be some other family members there on Tuesday as well. But Shirley will be singing. You don’t want to hear me singing, okay? She’s performing, and I’m putting on the party. We’ve been talking every day. I think we spoke for 45 minutes last night. She’s just so excited that we’re celebrating him in the way that he deserves.”

“She’s a beautiful child,” Shirley says of Egan, her junior by a few decades. “I see her dad in her. And we want to honor both fathers, the father that made this thing real, and the father that they accepted. You know, that was a partnership, right there.”

https://www.memphisflyer.com/b-b-king-turns-100

B.B. King Turns 100
Celebrate the life and legacy of blues legend Riley B. King.

Alice Faye Duncan
4:00 a.m. Sep. 10, 2025

This is the abridged history of B.B. King. He passed away in 2015. If he had lived, the blues musician would be turning 100 years old on September 16th, 2025.

Born in a cropper shack near Itta Bena, Mississippi, his parents, Nora and Albert, named him Riley B. King. Before he sang the blues, Riley lived it. His parents separated when he was very young. Then at the age of 9, his mother died. On her deathbed, Mama Nora hugged Riley tightly and said, “When you do good and treat folks right, good things will come to you.” Riley saved those words in the pocket of his soul and moved to his grandmother’s home in the hills of Kilmichael, Mississippi.

At the Elkhorn school near Kilmichael, students laughed at Riley because he stuttered badly. His teacher, Professor Luther Henson, would remind him that despite his condition, he was born with a purpose. Professor Henson also taught Riley and his classmates that a Black child in Jim Crow America did not have the luxury to be mediocre. He told his students, “You must be exceptional.” These words shaped young Riley into a good student, a popular church singer, and a successful tractor driver. Whatever he attempted, Riley B. King did so in a spirit of excellence.

Reverend Archie Fair, a singing preacher at Austin Chapel (COGIC), inspired Riley to play guitar. The preacher’s weeping strings soothed Riley’s grief when he sat in church remembering Mama Nora on Sundays. During the week, Riley received joy listening to blues records playing on his Aunt Mima’s winding Victrola. Standing in the center of her cabin, as Blind Lemon Jefferson’s guitar cried, WAAH-WAAH-WAAH, Riley would clap his sorrow away. And whenever Riley dared to sing gospel or blues, his stutter vanished. His voice was golden.

As a teenager, Riley purchased his first guitar for $15. Lessons were impossible on his sharecropper wages, so he ordered a guitar book from the Sears, Roebuck and Co. catalog. His ambition was to sound like his cousin, Bukka White, a Memphis bluesman who played a silver resonator with a metal slide. Few people know this, but B.B. King’s piercing electric sound evolved from his tireless attempts to play like Bukka.

By 1940, Riley’s grandmother, Elnora Farr died. He moved from pillar to post, never content until he settled in the Delta town of Indianola, Mississippi. Come Saturday nights on the corner of Church and Second Street, he would play his blues for dancing men and women, who had labored all week in the cotton fields. Captivated by Riley’s golden voice and his good-time music, the dancers filled his guitar case with coins, making him feel rich. There in Downtown Indianola under a glimmering moon, Riley would make his guitar giggle as he remembered his mother’s words. When you do good and treat folks right, good things will come to you.

Through shattering trials and astounding triumphs, Riley B. King the tractor driver transformed into B.B. King, the Blues King, philanthropist, and international star. He won 15 Grammy Awards, was inducted into the Blues and Rock & Roll Halls of Fame, and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President George W. Bush.

This year marks B.B. King’s centennial. Celebrate his light. Tell your children his legacy. Sit with them and listen to Live at the Regal from 1964. If blues music is to thrive for generations to come, young people must learn about B.B. King. During their formative years, children must have an early encounter with the music of Muddy Waters, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Furry Lewis, Koko Taylor, John Lee Hooker, and a host of other Black geniuses whose blues shaped America. A child’s music education should begin in the home. B.B. King turns 100! Let the good times roll.

Alice Faye Duncan is a Memphis educator who writes for children. Learn about her books at alicefayeduncan.com. Duncan will celebrate B.B. King’s centennial at the Stax Museum of American Soul Music on Saturday, September 13th, at 2 p.m., where she will read her new book, Blues Boy — The B.B. King Story.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertai ... 167461007/

B.B. King at 100: Why the 'King of the Blues' still matters
Daniel de Visé
USA TODAY

B.B. King, the King of the Blues, would have turned 100 on Sept. 16. Most Americans know his name, his primacy among blues legends, and the singular identity of his beloved hollow-body Gibson guitar named Lucille.

Ten years after his 2015 death, people might have a harder time recalling why B.B. King matters. Here’s a quick refresher.

Born Sept. 16, 1925, in the Mississippi Delta, Riley “B.B.” King overcame wrenching poverty and Jim Crow, a system of laws stacked against Black Americans in the South. Then, in the 1950s, he rose to fame as the nation’s premier blues artist.

B.B. King created and popularized a new style of solo guitar, modeled on the natural tremolo of a human voice. When King stopped singing and Lucille started soloing, he liked to think that she was taking over.

Was B.B. King the first guitar hero?

It’s hard to imagine a time when no one bent a note on a guitar. Guitar heroes sat front and center in thousands of pop bands from the Woodstock era on, with many playing like B.B. King.

But King came first. He toiled for more than a decade, through the 1950s into the 1960s. And ever so gradually, other guitarists began to adopt his signature style. The first were Black blues guitar acolytes, including Buddy Guy and Albert King. From them, the style spread to white blues guitarists in Britain, including Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page.

With the British Invasion, the B.B. King style of solo guitar crossed back over to America, ultimately embraced by virtually every lead guitarist of the late ‘60s and ‘70s and beyond, from Jimi Hendrix to David Gilmour, Carlos Santana, Billy Gibbons and Prince.

King’s own career had distinct chapters. From his first gigs in 1940s Memphis through the mid-1960s, he was known and celebrated almost exclusively within the Black community. He toured the segregated Chitlin’ Circuit. His records sold mostly to Black listeners.

Early on, B.B. King's guitar work went unsung

It’s hard to imagine today, but throughout that era, King was known primarily as a blues singer. To most fans, his guitar work came second. The guitar was a back-bench instrument in those days: Guitar-playing bandleaders Chuck Berry and T-Bone Walker were the exception.

King crossed over to mainstream fame in the late 1960s, finally playing gigs to both white and Black audiences, recording albums and singles marketed, at last, to mainstream pop patrons. In 1969, he went on tour with the Rolling Stones. His first big mainstream hit, “The Thrill is Gone,” hit the radio that year.

Over the decades, King’s fame continued to grow. By the turn of the century, he was embraced as King of the Blues. In 2006, President George W. Bush awarded King the Presidential Medal of Freedom. By the time of his death, King had visited 90 countries and had performed more than 17,000 concerts.

"He wanted to make the blues a respectable genre that was acceptable around the world," said Sue King Evans, King's ex-wife and the love of his life. "He died loving his life and accomplishing his purpose."

And that is why B.B. King matters.

Daniel de Visé, a reporter for USA TODAY, is author of the 2022 Grove Atlantic book “King of the Blues: The Rise and Reign of B.B. King.”