Biography of BB King

B.B. King was a blues singer and guitarist. His full name is 
Riley B. King. He was born September 16, 1925, near Indianola, 
Mississippi. An important aspect in King's life was, of course, when 
he was first exposed to the blues. 'I guess the earliest sound of the 
blues that I can rremember was in the fields while people would be 
pickin' cotton or choppin' or somethin,' " he told Living Blues . " 
When I sing and play now I can hear those same sounds that I used to 
hear then as a kid."

 B.B. King's first musical influence came through religion. He was 
a member of the Church of God In Christ. He was forbidden to play 
blues at home. He sang in spiritual groups like the Elkhorn Singers 
and the Saint John's Gospel Singers. A relative who was a guitarist 
and a preacher showed King his first chords on the instrument. As a 
teenager he began playing streetcorners for coins, combining gospel 
songs with the blues. When he started making more money playing in one 
night then he would in a week on the farm, he decided to head to 
Memphis. After a few years, King went back to Indianola to work and 
repay some debts, eventually returning to Memphis to stay. King's 
trademark is the trilling vibrato he developed in an attempt to 
duplicate the stinging sound of the steel slide. With the help of the 
late Sonny Boy William- son he began singing radio commercials and 
became a disc jockey. Later he played in small clubs, and then in 
larger venues in the mid-1960's. He has toured extensively through- 
out the United States and around the world, appearing in concerts, at 
blues festivals, on television, and in films. How did Riley B. King 
receive the nickname B.B. King? Well, he was known as " the blues boy 
from Beale Street," later shortened to B.B. "Riley B. King is the 
world's preeminent blues guitarist. There is hardly a rock, pop, or 
blues player anywhere who doesn't owe him something." Frank Sinatra 
and Nat Cole are two who use the "B.B. King style of blues." Finally, 
I leave you with a quote. In a Rolling Stone interview King stated; " 
I was always afraid to say that I was a blues singer. Because it 
looked like people kind of looked down on you a lot of times when you 
mention the word blues. But I thank God today I can stick out my chest 
and say, yeah, I'm a blues singer!"