Original subtitles

(TRAIN HORN BLARING)

(BLUES MUSIC PLAYING)

(TRAIN HORN BLARING)

It's all about feeling.

You can play a thousand notes a minute,

and if I just go straight across the board and there's no feeling,

it doesn't mean anything.

# I love her in the morning, I love her at night

# The very next day, you know she hug me just right

# I love my baby #

The blues, all the muscle is black,

it's a feeling that comes outta suffering.

# I love my baby, I don't care a thing about me #

(PLAYS HARMONICA)

Being denied, denial, refused, abused, misused,

that's what the blues is.

See, a lot of time the younger people

say that's old folks' music, the blues is.

But wait until they have a problem.

The people who follow blues music, who are attracted to it,

recognise the honesty of the singer's story.

There's no music in the world that cuts emotionally

the way that blues guitar can cut.

He invented the whole approach

that modern electric blues players use.

Sincere, earnest, true, for real and genuine.

Those five things.

If you have those five things, then you can play the blues,

otherwise you're just gonna sound like a parakeet

repeating something that you don't understand.

He's great in every way, just the girth of the man is great,

He's the only guy, or musician of any sort,

male or female, that defines a genre of music.

He's played probably in every country

where they have electricity.

And, ah, probably a couple where they don't.

Well, when you gotta say blues, you gotta say BB.

You know, no doubt.

He's the master, he really is the grandmaster.

(BLUES MUSIC PLAYING)

MORGAN FREEMAN: What makes somebody great?

Somebody special?

When you look at a man's life,

can you truly say that man made a difference?

People say folk are born that way or were blessed by a higher force.

Others say your environment makes it so.

In 1925, on a hot, sticky Wednesday in the middle of September,

the cries of a new-born baby rang out from a sharecropper's cabin

over the cotton fields of the Mississippi Delta.

A boy was born that day that was going to make a difference.

His name? Riley B King.

I was born, according to my dad,

between a little place called Indianola and Itta Bena.

So when I first talked about it I said, Itta Bena.

And that's been going on ever since.

(BLUES MUSIC PLAYING)

From what he said, if I can understand him correctly,

we're about at the turn to the road.

BB: Dad, you did all right so far.

He must be looking over us, boss. Yeah, he's looking over us now.

(BLUES MUSIC PLAYING)

(APPLAUSE) Thank you very much, thank you.

To be here, where somebody can truly say

"B, this is where you were born,

this is where the world first knew about you, right here",

is a high for me, because I feel very good.

My mother was named Nora Ella,

my father was named Albert Lee,

but for a young couple that hadn't been married too long,

and their first kid coming up...

They lived not too far back over here.

Some of the houses in the area where I lived

were houses that we could look out through the boards of the house

at different times of day and tell what time it was.

When it rained, you had to have several buckets

because the water would drop through the top

and you'd have to set a bucket to keep it from splashing on the floor.

My mother, I guess was like most mothers,

wanted to make sure that all the teaching

and all of the guiding that they can do for you,

and I believe my mother loved me and I know that I loved her,

and everything she tried to teach me, I tried to learn.

So finally, my mother, my dad, when they were separated,

my mother left and moved to Kilmichael, Mississippi.

I noticed that my mother had big spots of blood clots in her eye.

She died of diabetes, same as her son has, this one.

# Nobody loves me but my mother

# And she could be jivin' too #

I had been living with other people all of my life since my mom.

I had two, three great-aunts.

One of them was the one that used to have the phonograph

that I used to go to her, her name was Jemima.

I used to love to go to her house for that

but didn't like to go to her house because she always kissed me,

and she always dipped snuff, and I didn't like snuff,

and every time she kissed me, I'd get a taste of that snuff,

so I'd beg my mom "Don't take me over there!"

But then I'd think about the phonograph

and say "It's OK, take me on over!" (LAUGHS)

I kinda fix myself for that first kiss,

after that I didn't have to go through that again.

He moved from there over on Edwin Henson's place.

And that's when Riley started staying with him

and enjoying blues playing.

And he moved over there to stay with his Uncle William

and them to tend to the baby.

My mother's brother was married to a sanctified preacher's sister.

This preacher, after church on a Sunday afternoon,

would visit his sister, which was my aunt,

and he'd always lay this guitar on the bed,

and I'd go get it, soon as they turned their backs,

and I think this is really what started me

to fooling with the guitar,

not by listening to some of the other people.

The roots, as they sometimes say.

I think my beginning was Elkhorn School.

At that time, I had to walk about five miles a day to school.

Formal school did not provide much education on the plantation.

They said them big boys ought to be in the field, not in school.

Usually, I try to be positive in my thinking,

and I owe that to Professor Luther H Henson.

He told me things then that I can still hear him telling me today.

Don't smoke, don't drink.

You got one house, your body.

Your body is one house.

You've gotta take care of that cos you're not gonna get another one.

I think he did it because he saw the need

of the black children, needing to be taught

how to better themselves to make a better living,

and it could be done if they come to school

and get a better education.

I'll always love him.

I was a regular hand from the time I was seven years old.

Didn't used to have all those child labour laws and all that.

So I was doing farm work just like the adults was when I was seven.

I started about, what we call from can to can't.

Can means when you can see, can't when you cannot see.

And I think about it,

when I was travelling with the mule, following the mule,

ploughing, doing all that, you're walking about 30 miles a day,

and you do that six days a week. So, you figure it out.

And then you do that six days a week,

you do it for six months out of the year.

So, multiply that by 18 years.

I've walked around the world.

# Ooh, Lordy, my troubles so hard

# Ooh, Lordy, my troubles so hard

# Don't nobody know my troubles... #

Out of that condition, the blues were born.

Usually, one guy would be ploughing by himself.

Or maybe one guy would take his hoe

and chop way out in front of everybody else.

And usually, you would hear this guy sing.

# Oh, I wake up in the morning... #

That's the only time you'd get a chance to sing the blues,

is out in the field,

because your parents wouldn't allow that in the house.

Nothing but spirituals.

So if you're picking cotton,

you can sing whatever you wanna sing, you know?

To play that music and not invoke the name Jesus or God, I guess,

then who are you invoking? The Devil!

Oh, I don't know about all of that, but what's what they would call it,

they said you're selling yourself to the devil!

A lot of people in the church,

they go through this thing that it's the devil's music,

but the way he plays and the way he sings,

that is a gift from God,

and if you are at all religious,

you will believe that he has that gift

and that he was touched when he was, you know, in the womb.

(GOSPEL SINGING)

# Listen...

# I hear somebody calling my name #

You were John, Jim, Jones and nobody all the week long,

but Sunday morning, you became Brother John,

Sister Mary and Mister Jim,

because you were somebody Sunday morning.

But if it had not been for that,

we would have gone out like a light.

My mother was very religious.

Very, very religious.

She made me go to church, whether I wanted to or not.

When he joined the church, Archie was a preacher,

my brother-in-law was a preacher. He preached his church out.

Reverend Archie Fair was our pastor,

and the first person I ever heard play electric guitar,

and that's why I wanted to be like him.

In the church, this boy would get a chance

to play on Archie's guitar a little.

He was a preacher and a teacher.

And I think that he didn't necessarily

just meant for it to be me, but all of his students,

and I liked him, worshipped him,

and I think that's how he helped me a whole lot.

Well, when his grandmother moved over there,

William decided that he wanted him to stay with his grandmother,

so he put him down there with her.

And she worked for my mother then.

She would cook and she'd clean house,

just anything that you need to do, you know?

And they probably worked in the fields, too.

When my grandmother died, I still stayed in the little house

that my grandmother and I had lived in before she died.

And I remember, she owed something like $35, $40 or something.

But we didn't make much money.

I was making $15 a month, so...

But I paid my grandmother's bill, I paid it off myself.

I felt deserted.

Nobody but me.

# I'll survive... #

After my daddy got me and brought me to Lexington, Mississippi

and I started going to school there,

which was the first big school I'd ever gone to.

Word is, he had some half-sisters and brothers.

And he said that they couldn't get along too good,

that's what he told us.

He had three girls and a boy and those was my sisters and brother.

Which I loved, but I wasn't as close to them as I think I would have been

had I been raised with them in the beginning.

My dad never told me he loved me, he never did.

But I knew when he did.

When he showed love to me, he called me Jack.

Now, why in the heck did he call me Jack?

But any time he was very pleased,

I had that feeling, he'd call me Jack.

Out of the clear blue sky, "Jack, what do you think about this?"

Or what do you think about something.

And I'd feel so good till I'd almost cry cos I knew what that meant.

But he never, ever, ever, ever, that I know

called or said "Son, I love you, I love you."

But I tell my kids, great-grandkids and grandkids,

tell 'em all, when I go home, "I love you."

In those days, it was oppression

and you'd be depressed by the oppression

because you had no rights, black folks had no rights.

You were not black then, you were negroes or niggers.

Klu Klux Klan was thought of, I believe, in that area at the time.

I never did come face-to-face with 'em,

but I knew a lot of people did.

For you that don't know it,

the Citizen Council, White Citizen Council,

began in Indianola, Mississippi.

My home.

Our place was to work hard and obey the white man.

One of my first days of really experiencing

what segregation was really like,

a mob had killed a boy, they'd hung him,

it had to do with a white lady,

they had castrated him and drug him behind in a car

to the courthouse in Lexington, Mississippi, and I saw it.

And that's something I've never forgotten, I guess,

something like seeing people killed in the war, you don't forget it.

You was just a thing.

Not a human being, just a work thing.

We had a slogan, "If a mule dies, buy another one..."

"Kill a nigger, hire another one."

And that's the way I was brought up.

I mean, you were nobody. You were just about equal to a mule.

You could not say yes or no to a white man, it was "Mister".

And you just didn't argue with them.

And whatever they paid you, you accepted that and went along.

There was no such thing as social security,

no such thing as retirement, you had no insurance,

only insurance folks had was burial insurance, for when you die,

otherwise, they would put you in a box,

they had a box, they'd make a box, put you in and bury you.

I was there, I know.

It was badder than bad.

We all was raised in bigotry, hatred and denial.

None of us could get a drink of water at a public water fountain.

BB and none of the rest of us could

go and sit in a restaurant and have a decent meal.

None of us could stay, not BB, no other negro,

could go in a hotel and get a room,

so, yes, he faced the same things that all of us faced,

that was racism, bigotry and hatred.

But let me add this, though, let me say this to you about BB,

he never let that turn him against white people.

MORGAN FREEMAN: Young Riley King started dreaming

of life back in the Delta.

The Delta was home.

So, late in 1941, 16-year-old Riley jumped on his bicycle

and began to peddle his way home.

Back to where his heart belonged.

So, me and John was sitting on the porch one evening

and here he come, riding on his bike,

and I said, "Who is that?" And he said, "I dunno"

and he got up and looked closer, and I said, "Oh, that's Riley."

See, all his other people had left here.

There was a few people, like the Fairs,

Mr John Fair and his beautiful wife, Miss Leslie Fair.

John brought him to my father to give him a place to stay.

So he fixed that little cabin up for him,

and he didn't have any clothes,

all he had was just the clothes on his back, and that bicycle.

I had a good boss. Mr Cartledge was one of those people that,

I wish the world had a lot more of 'em.

He seemed to be one of them people that was a fair man.

During those days, in the '30s, a lot of time,

we didn't think a lot of white people was fair.

We thought a lot of the white people at that time

thought only of themselves.

Now, he wasn't one of those people.

The house stood about here, where BB lived when he lived

with Flake and Thelma Cartledge and their son Wayne,

I do remember that he had always wanted to play the guitar

and a fella by the name of Denzel Tipple

had a guitar he wanted to sell, $15.

And my father went down and paid for it for him

and BB paid my father back, you see.

You may not know that Wayne wanted his daddy

to buy the guitar for him and he wouldn't do it,

and BB was the one that ended up with the guitar.

And I'm still mad about I didn't get the guitar.

(BLUES MUSIC PLAYING)

When I first came to the Barrett plantation,

I'd heard a lot about the plantation and I'd heard a lot

from a lot of the tenants that lived on the plantation

about what a nice man he was to work for.

BB, I taught him how to drive, he drove a tractor,

he drove a tractor for Mr Barrett, BB did.

There was many big plantations,

and they would have somebody they called a rider.

Usually this was a white person on a horse.

This white person usually carried a gun in a lot of cases,

in a lot of cases they'd carry a whip.

Mr Barrett was very, I dunno, very thoughtful, I would say.

So, what he did, he hired a black overseer,

named Mr Baggot, Booker Baggot,

and we worked like crazy because we wanted to keep him.

Mr Baggot is the one that taught me to drive a tractor.

If there's any such thing

as a superstar in tractors, I thought I was.

Of course, I thought I was pretty cute, too, at the time.

I'd wake up, and I'm due at the tractor barn

in about half an hour,

and I lived about a mile from the tractor barn.

So when I'd wake up,

I had about 30, 40 minutes to get to the tractor barn,

I'd put on my clothes and was at the tractor barn

by the time everybody else was ready to fill up.

# Precious Lord, take my hand

# Lead me on, let me stand #

My early years, I sang Gospel songs with various quartets.

And usually I was the lead singer all the time.

And we did very well, there was a group called...

The Famous St John Gospel Singers.

The Famous St John Gospel Singers.

They had a good time, listen to them and everything.

I'd get home, I'd normally turn the radio on,

sit there and wait for them to come on.

I sure did.

Then is the time that I decided I wanted to get married

and I got married to a young lady.

To Martha King.

In that year, we lived in the house together.

We lived in a three-room shotgun house.

Two doors, one in front and one in back.

When Martha and BB married, they didn't have no children.

He was singing Gospel songs then,

and he didn't stay at home much, he didn't stay at home,

he was running around singing a whole lot.

Saturday was my day. Go to town on Saturday and have a good time!

(BLUES MUSIC PLAYING)

# Have you ever been down to New Orleans?

# Then you can understand just what I mean #

Some would walk to town, some would catch a ride,

one person might have a car,

and people used to come to town, then, in wagons.

Everybody threw their cares to the wind.

Oh, Church Street was black folks' street.

# It was rocking

# It was rocking... #

People were in and out,

gambling and doing what little dancing they were doing.

If you didn't get on Church Street, you wouldn't be in Indianola.

He had one corner he would play on early during Saturday afternoon

and would put his hat out and people would throw coins in it.

Later on during that Saturday evening,

he would move further down Church Street,

where the real roughnecks were,

the people who had a real appreciation for the blues

and didn't mind people knowing it,

they threw just a little more coins in the hat than the earlier crowd

which probably was the church-going people.

Now, he used to play on what they called juke houses' porches,

all the way down Church Street,

that's what used to be, you wouldn't call them nightclubs,

but juke joints, it would be, that time of year, then.

Indianola, Mississippi, on a Saturday night, on Church Street,

you would remember forever.

I came in in a hurry, on my way to go to a church to sing that night.

I'd been ploughing, ploughing, ploughing, and then it happened.

We got off that evening, I cut this ignition off of the tractor,

and I jumped out and start running to get ready to go out

and it started up again.

And when the tractor started up again, it went forward.

And all of this broke off.

Scared me half to death.

I never did stop running, and that's the first time I went to Memphis.

# And I'm walking

# Walking and crying

# You don't love me no more

# Well, I did all for you

# Did all I could

# All I did, darling... #

I had a lot of fun, because Memphis was a city.

I would say it was like heaven.

(LAUGHS) All them guitars, and guys to play 'em?

Oh, what a feeling it was.

Beale Street had many musicians that was interested

in trying to help you if you wanted to learn.

And they had musicians that would just meet up on Beale Street,

like on the weekends, and trade ideas.

I came to Memphis and started hearing all those other guys play.

I found out I was nothing. Not much.

I'm still like that today.

(BLUES MUSIC PLAYING)

MORGAN FREEMAN: Once in Memphis, BB King sought and found his cousin,

the great bluesman, Bukka White.

Bukka was born up around West Point, Mississippi

and a lot of people say he taught me to play, but that's not true.

But he did teach me quite a bit about being a blues player.

Bukka White used to tell me that to be a blues singer,

you should always dress like you was

trying to go to the bank to borrow money, which means you dress, well,

a word musicians use, kinda sharp, you know?

And he used to play with a slide on his finger,

and I could never get that,

I've got stupid fingers, they just wouldn't work.

So, in order to get somewhat the type of sound that he had,

I would trill my hand... (PLAYS TRILLING NOTE) Like that.

And I think over the years I've done pretty good with it.

(PLAYS TRILLING NOTE) Still don't have it right.

I asked BB one time how he got his guitar to sound that way

and he said, "I was trying to make it sound like a steel."

So, who would have thought?

Beale Street Amateur Night.

I hosted the show for 11 consecutive years.

At first, we used to have a five, three and two dollar prize,

but then it got so that it was just everybody

that came on stage got a dollar.

Now, I remember going on that show many times

and thank God for Rufus Thomas, because Rufus Thomas was the MC,

I guess I looked so bad and so pitiful and was so broke. (LAUGHS)

Rufus Thomas, when he'd say me, he'd say "You know you was on last week"

and I'd say, "Yeah", "Well, why you back this week?"

"I need to go on again, cos I need that dollar!"

I stayed up there for about six, eight months

and then I called some of my family back

and I said, "Ah, tell Mr Barrett I'm sorry,

"and I would like to work and pay it off."

So he got back in with Mr John Barrett, came back

and worked by the day, driving tractors.

Well, with wobbly legs, I came back,

and I think it cost me $500 or $600, and I paid it off,

and the next time I left to go to Memphis to start my career,

I started it correctly.

# Whoa, Lord, what a beautiful city

# Oh, what a beautiful city, God knows #

When we left Mississippi going to Memphis,

we expected many, many things to happen, and it did.

The late Sonny Boy, the second Sonny Boy Williamson,

but he was on the radio in West Memphis, Arkansas.

I decided I wanted to go over and see him one day

and one day I did, and when I went over to see him,

I begged him to let me sing a song.

So he made me audition, and I did,

and he liked it and he put me on the show that day.

And that night he had two jobs to play,

one of them he didn't want because it didn't pay much money.

So he called the lady and asked the lady

that he was supposed to play for

did she hear the programme? And she said yes.

So he called her, and he said "Miss Ander, did you hear the boy?"

And she said yeah.

He said, "Well, I'm gonna send him down to work for me tonight."

So I went over there, man, and they paid me $12.

12 American dollars. That's a lot of bread for a guy to be making.

You know, like 35 cents a hundred picking cotton, you know?

She said, "If you can get a job on the radio like Sonny Boy has,

"I'll give you this job, and you can play six nights a week."

And I thought about that and said

"God, I hope I can get me a job on the radio."

Well, I'm just a blues singer.

Tractor driver, truck driver...

I was a disc jockey for a while.

Why I sing the blues is because I lived it.

You're probably wondering "That guy, the way you talk, a disc jockey?"

Trust me, I was. For about five years.

The only way to do it is to say it loud and clear,

make sure that everyone will hear.

It's the truth the way it is.

And I enjoyed it so much that

the call letters of the radio station,

I can remember today like it was yesterday.

This is BB King, making a statement a natural fact.

WDIA.

Everybody wanna know why I sing the blues.

The first all-black operated station in the mid-South.

In fact, I think, in the nation.

Greetings and salutations!

Ooh, poopy-doo and how do you do?

It's a good good morning to you

on an all-blue Saturday here on WDIA

with your Rufus Thomas.

This new radio station was being opened in Memphis,

so when the red light went off the air,

I went to the window and I knocked. (KNOCKING)

So he came to the door and said

"What can I do for you, young fella?"

And I said, "Well, I wanna make a record

"and I wanna go on the radio." And he laughed.

Mr Ferguson said, "Well, we don't make records,"

and then had this deep look, thought look in his face,

and he said to Mr Williams, "You know, we got this new product."

He said, "Maybe he would be good for this new product."

So he went and got me a bottle, and he held it up like this.

He said, "This is Pep-ti-kon.

"Do you think you could write a jingle for it?"

I start to thinking about it. I said "Yes, sir, I can write a jingle."

So, it went like this...

# Pep-ti-kon sure is good

# Pep-ti-kon sure is good

# Pep-ti-kon sure is good

# You can get it anywhere in your neighbourhood

He said "You're hired!" (LAUGHS)

INTERVIEWER: Blues Boy King.

Blues Boy. Did your dad name you that?

No, I used to be a disc jockey, in Memphis,

and they call me the boy from Beale Street, the blues boy,

so people, instead of saying blues boy,

they just start using the word BB, which meant blues boy,

and my real name is Riley B King.

Now, most times, if someone would come up and say "Hi, Riley",

I would wonder who they were talking about

I taught him the best I could.

Lotta times, he didn't understand what I was telling him.

But when I put him with a group,

that put pressure on him and he had to learn.

You can't work with nobody without you know.

You see what a bass player's laying down?

When you see BB playing, the bass player's right behind him.

That's what he listens to. Now you know!

In fact, it's like I usually tell the band, like I have today,

"You know a lot more than I do, and you play better than I do,

"but I'm the band leader."

BB was just learning how to play, but he always could sing.

And he finally learned how to play.

(BLUES GUITAR PLAYING)

MORGAN FREEMAN: Having learned from those around him,

the young and confident Riley King was ready to cut his first sides.

BB King first recorded for Bullet Records in Nashville, Tennessee.

Jim Bullet owned the company. I think he had four sides he did.

He did a thing for his first wife, Martha King.

In fact, the song recorded Martha King.

I thought I was really making it,

at that time, as a musician, cos I was recording.

(BLUES GUITAR PLAYING)

# Now it is three o'clock in the morning... #

The first session that I did with BB in Memphis

was Three O'clock Blues, was his hit record that came out of there.

It was just, put the musicians together and er...

I said, "How big was that amplifier

"you had when you made Three O'clock In the Morning?"

He said, "About like that."

And that's why you had the real, natural tone,

it wasn't nothing fictitious about it, you know?

That's exactly what BB,

what you played was what the amplifier gave you back.

When he recorded Three O'clock Blues,

that's when things really began to happen for him, you know?

He said I'd like to have a new guitar

before we went in the studio.

I said, "I'll buy you two of 'em."

I bought he two guitars, that's what he called Lucille.

And he said, "I'll make you two hit records," which he did.

I always wanted to meet Helen.

Helen? Who's Helen?

Helen, Helen, your guitar, you know, when you start-

Oh, you're talking about Lucille? This is Lucille, it's my baby.

(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)

That's not the guitar I saw you with last night, BB.

(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)

The first one that was named Lucille

was because of a fight in a little nightclub,

and we played there, and went to...

Had something like that big garbage can,

just like that one, just like it, but a little larger.

And they would half-fill the can with kerosene.

Light that fuel, and that's what we had for heat.

So, this particular night, two guys start to fighting

and one of them knocked the other one over on this container

and the fuel, you know, spilled on the floor

and it was already burning, so as they tried to put it out,

it seemed to burn more.

Everybody in the little club that was dancing

started to run outside, including me.

But when I got on the outside,

I remembered that I had ran off and left my guitar.

So, I started back for it, and the fellas

that were working with me said "No, don't do it."

But I went anyway, and I got my guitar,

but I was almost burned to death trying to save it.

So, the next morning we found that two men had gotten burned,

they got trapped in the building, they had burned to death,

and we also found that these two guys was fighting about a lady.

The lady's name was Lucille.

I named my guitar Lucille to remind me

not to do a thing like that again.

And I haven't! (LAUGHS)

# Now, darling...

# Though I love you... #

MORGAN FREEMAN: Beale Street entrepreneur Robert Henry

started to look after the interests of BB King.

This resulted in a national tour of the main black theatres and clubs,

known as the chitlin' circuit.

The road was no place for a marriage.

The road was BB King's new home.

He told me, he said, "Cille," I said, "Yes?"

He said, "Martha done left me."

I said, "Girl, why you leave him?"

And she said "Cos he won't stay at home,

"he playing, going everywhere."

I said, "Martha, BB King ain't got no women likin' him.

"If he playin', girl, you crazy.

"You should stay with your husband."

But she didn't.

This business is a very difficult business.

But I couldn't live without it

and I don't think he could live without it, either.

# Oh, done left me

# Baby for someone else #

When Bill Harvey signed on to BB,

Bill Harvey, I think, Bill had about 11, yeah, he had 11 piece.

And he stayed with BB for 14 years.

Every record that BB put out after Harvey got with him,

the first was Woke Up This Morning, was a hit, a hit, a hit.

A little bit later on, after I had been touring for a while,

then I turned the disc jockey loose and just toured.

And I'm still doing that.

At the time, when BB got his first bus, there was excitement

because coming out of a station wagon

into a big Continental Railway bus

was just a marvellous feat for the group.

And it was something that none of the other groups had, either.

This is the original picture of

the BB King Band on Beale Street in 1955.

Beale and Hernando, between Hernando and Third Street.

I think everybody knows this band as The BB King Band.

This is The BB King Band.

No matter how many bands he goes through,

this will always be The BB King Band.

Ooh, man. (LAUGHS) Yeah, we were good.

Under your seat, you would have a box.

You would have a box of food, like pork and beans and sardines

and crackers and that kind of stuff,

because a lot of time, you wouldn't have time to eat

at a restaurant or cafe, per se.

And it was very difficult,

cos a lot of the places you couldn't go in, anyway.

And I've seen the Promised Land. (AUDIENCE CHEERING)

I may not get there with you,

but I want you to know tonight,

that we as a people will get to the Promised Land!

Desegregation of America didn't start until the '60s.

And BB had been on the road for a good ten, 12 years before that.

You couldn't live, it was just the chitlin' circuit,

that's what they called it.

Negro baseball played it, the big black bands played it,

chitlin' circles all over America,

that's what they called the black community, the chitlin' circuit.

But y'all didn't think y'all was the chitlin' circuit, did you?

Well, everybody- Oh, no, no.

But y'all didn't realise that it was

quote-unquote "The chitlin' circuit."

Oh, no. Everybody knew that the black section

of America was the chitlin' circuit.

But Ernest, hold on- You didn't refer to it-

They didn't refer to it as the chitlin' circuit.

Yes, they did! Did y'all, Cats? You was there.

Any books out of that period,

you'll know that period was the chitlin' circuit,

that's all the places where negroes played.

They accepted it, they accepted that's what it was,

because we were playing black clubs.

Black clubs, that was the identification.

There wasn't no signs up, it was just verbage.

Chitlin' circuit? Yeah. I don't remember what that is.

We just played everywhere.

Apollo Theatre to the honky-tonk joints.

All over the country.

BB was always on the road.

He's the only guy, I think,

I think he got a record that he played 365 days one year.

And I tell him all the time,

I don't want that record, he can keep that one, you know?

I used to work 320 days a year, BB worked more gigs.

I don't know where he gets the energy from.

I mean, this man works more than anybody,

because the road is his home.

(BLUES GUITAR PLAYING)

No night off. 365 days a year.

Some days, we didn't even get a chance to go to sleep.

# I got a sweet little angel

# I love the way she spreads her wings #

He told me he wasn't gonna ask my mom to get married

because he felt that she would say no

and he didn't want that.

So he said we'll just have to wait until you get 18.

So I said OK, and that's what we did.

And he was in Detroit at the time.

Erm, actually, I was 18 in March,

but he wanted to put off getting married until June

when we were in Detroit, because he wanted Reverend Franklin,

who's Aretha Franklin's father, to marry us.

So we waited until we got to Detroit, got the license

and Reverend Franklin married us.

All I know is that he'd be a hard man to have a relationship with

because he's moving so fast.

I mean, the dude sits down when he's playing,

but he is running through the year.

After we got married, we got in a car,

went to Cleveland and went to work.

We just kept going after that. Just one day led into another.

# Tell me the reason why... #

(BLUES GUITAR PLAYING)

In the early days, we'd love to go fishing.

Any time he had the opportunity, he would go fishing.

So, one day he told me he was going fishing

and he went out to the car

and I said, "You're going fishing in a suit?"

He says, "That's all I have."

He says, "I don't have any other clothes.

"So I have to go fishing in a suit."

And it was a silk suit. So, he went fishing in a silk suit.

And that just shows you,

whatever he wanted to do and however he felt like doing it,

he would do it, no matter what.

First, I want to say, when I try to play,

I try to play not just for myself, I try to play for people.

I want them to laugh, I want them to smile.

The blues becomes a living thing when he's playing,

it's not just somebody trying to play the blues,

it becomes a palpable presence on-stage.

BB King is gone when he's playing.

BB King's been gone in the world of the blues,

just living in that, that ether for so long that he belongs to it.

I looked over, I heard this sound of

like a 747 taking off, which is his voice,

and I noticed that as he stepped back from the microphone,

his voice got louder. (LAUGHS)

And then I realised, as they say in New Oreland,

this is some other kinda shit.

This is some other kind of shit.

I dunno, there's some shamanism involved.

I think when I was 15, I went and saw BB in concert

and, ah, completely changed my life.

It's not about technique at all.

The first thing that inspired me, that I got from BB King...

He's concerned with telling a story.

Was the direct, speaking to one, you know?

He's concerned with moving people.

And I have, all of my career, with my writing and my playing,

I have tried to maintain my focus on that.

BB King's tone was the first sound that...

I now call it "SOCC".

It means "the sound of collective consciousness."

You can write a song and bullshit with it, but you can't...

If you don't sell it, what the hell did you cut it for?

BB knew how to sell it. He was great at this.

How about a nice, warm round of applause

to welcome the world's greatest blues singer,

the king of the blues, BB King! (AUDIENCE CHEERING)

When BB would come to Chicago,

he played a lot of different venues.

He played clubs, dances and places like that.

And he also played the Regal Theatre.

Jimi Hendrix gave me my first copy of Live At The Regal.

For me, that's just like the ultimate

live BB King blues album.

Recordings like Live At The Regal and Live At The Cook County Jail

are two of my favourite live albums of all time.

I think the fire and the passion

with which he was performing on those two recordings,

I think it's hard to come close to imagine that.

Live At The Regal was like this pivotal musical watershed

that took me away from the British blues temporarily,

where I had just discovered

American blues for the very first time

after listening to Clapton and Peter Green and, you know,

Paul Kossoff and Free and the Jeff Beck Group and, you know,

every incarnation of John Mayall and The Bluesbreakers.

One of the things that BB has is a great rapport with the audience.

You know, he did that song, er...

# Bought you a brand new Ford

# And you wanted a Cadillac #

# I bought you a ten dollar dinner

# You said thanks for the snack... #

# I let you stay in my penthouse

# And you said it was just a shack

# I gave you seven children

# And now you wanna give 'em back! # (LAUGHS)

# Now you wanna give 'em back!

# Cos I've been downhearted, baby #

You wanna hear BB King at the creme de la creme,

like Dexter Gordon would say, listen to Live At The Regal,

and every note, every word, every song,

everything is a perfect, flawless diamond, you know?

And that's, Peter Green had his tone.

When you hear Peter Green,

he sounds like BB King Live At The Regal.

I remember hearing the big, thick notes, so...

Doo-doo-doo-doo... You know, he starts off,

big, thick notes, not tangy or twangy, he starts off from there

and goes through the tones of the guitar.

We didn't hardly play for any white audiences.

Every once in a while,

I'd have Eric Clapton and them laughing like mad,

it was Eric Clapton, Paul Butterfield, Michael Bloomfield...

When they started showing up in clubs in Chicago,

we wasn't making enough money to buy a bottle of whiskey

so we'd go to next door and get the bottle of wine

out of the liquor store, which was cheaper,

and every time I saw a white face,

I'd say "Look out, man, there's a copy in the house," you know?

And that was these kids coming in,

picking up on the type of blues that Muddy and me was playing.

I was 17, at a club in Beaumont called The Raven.

I had a fake ID and got in.

We were playing, and I saw these four white people come in,

and one was extra-white, Johnny Winter.

I kept sending the band members up

to ask him if it was OK if I played,

and he didn't know if I could play at all.

"Can you play?" He said yes.

And he said, "Will you let him play?"

I said, "I dunno, I'll let you know in a little while."

We was the only white people in the club,

and he'd been having tax problems,

and he thought we were from the IRS,

come to bust him for his taxes.

So, I was so shocked and surprised

that it wasn't about the IRS,

that it took me a little while

to kinda get my feet back on the ground, you know?

He kept saying, "Well, we have arrangements."

"I've heard all your records, I know all your arrangements."

He asked to see my union card.

Yeah, he really checked me out.

I let him sit in, and he was good.

I'll tell you, he was good.

Cos I tried him, I went through three or four different keys

that a lot of guys are not too familiar with and I was enjoying it.

But he was a genuine guy.

He's a saint. He's a blues saint.

(BLUES MUSIC PLAYING)

All of us in this genre,

all of us in any kind of roots music,

we take what came before us.

The people I think that influenced me most was

Lowell Fulson,

Elmore James,

I was crazy about Charlie Christian.

And I also liked...

One of my real favourites was Django Reinhardt.

(BLUES GUITAR)

But I was crazy about Blind Lemon and Lonnie Johnson,

just the sound that they had made me, I don't know, tingle inside.

The last two or three generations are all students of BB.

Everybody from BB's generation are all students of T-Bone, he really was the guy.

It was just before I went in the army, about '42, I think,

I heard of a guy called T-Bone Walker.

# I'm in love with a woman

# But she's not in love with me

T-Bone Walker I thought was the best ever

at doing what he did and how he did it.

I loved him, still do.

And I imagine today, if you listen to my playing,

you'll hear a little bit of all of them. I'm telling my secret.

But I think a little bit of all of those people I liked,

with my own ideas, I created the BB King twingy guitar sound.

It's tough because usually divorces come because of cheating

or you fall out of love

or you have money problems.

We've had all those things and we've survived them.

But... the love always stayed and, you know, it's...

You just have to do it.

If you're going to be a travelling musician, marriage should be something you wouldn't want to do

until you're not travelling a lot, because there's very few travelling musicians that I know

that have been able and successful in marriage life.

It's very difficult to have a family life

with someone who's working on the road 365 days a year.

And the...

We did have somewhat of an agreement that...

..he would cut back some...

on his work, but...

that was very unrealistic of me to expect.

And you get to a point that you realise it is unrealistic.

Cos the nice thing is when you are married,

terrible thing when you're being divorced. It's awful.

If I had to do it all over again,

would I... at this stage?

Yes, I would.

# Oh, I guess it's the chains that bind me

# I can't shake it loose

# These chains and things

"He came to me, I didn't come to him.

He was brought to me because he had financial problems,

big-time, and he couldn't do anything, you know?

And he had to understand

and he had to listen to the rules, and he did."

Sid helped me out, helped me to get out of trouble with the government,

a few other things. So I said, "Look, you're my CPA,

but you've been doing everything that my manager should do.

Well, why don't you be my manager?" In fact, I asked him,

he didn't ask me.

"I set up a master plan

where we would be able to expose BB

out of the chitlin' circuit and get across all that

so he can make some money.

He wasn't making any money to speak of, you know?"

Sid absolutely was sort of a gateway to BB's career

and everything after that time period

was kind of, sort of, you know, it was already in place.

(BLUES GUITAR)

I didn't really become aware

of blues in general

until...

the English guitar players

started talking about it.

By the time I'd done most of my homework,

which was during my mid-20s,

I was very fortunate to get invited to play by John Mayall.

I would say that Eric was most influenced

by Freddie King's playing,

Mick Taylor was most influenced by Albert King

and Peter Green was most definitely a BB King devotee.

When I first met Jimi Hendrix, he talked about BB King.

So now he comes out and plays just a couple of notes.

Yeah, I know what you're saying, what you can say with a lot of notes,

BB King would say with a couple of notes, you know...

The wonderful thing about the three Kings...

..is we all learned to play from them.

The English invasion, I think that introduced a lot of Americans,

including me, to Howlin' Wolf and Slim Harpo and Muddy Waters.

I probably got more exposed to that kind of Chicago blues

and BB King, you know,

through that access of the English blues guys and Eric Clapton, those...

It was a great gift the Brits gave us.

The British blues, for me, was more immediate and more exciting.

It was louder, it tended to be a Les Paul guitar, Marshall amp.

It was more rock.

(ROCKY BLUES)

We do it better!

That was the thing.

We do it better.

But it seemed to have had that elevation,

that difference when the white boys started to sing the blues.

They really put it on a different kind of a scale.

Many of these young players coming along today have been really turned on by the way you play the guitar.

People like Mike Bloomfield. He's wonderful.

Do you hear yourself coming back from those bands? Er, well...

Yes, I believe I do.

I don't wanna stick my neck out there, but I think so.

But I'm grateful that some of them seem to like me.

I'm grateful because, to me,

it seemed to open a few doors for us

that seemed like they were never going to be open.

# Oh, because I

# I need your love so bad

# Need your soft voice

# To talk to me at night

The first chance to play in front of a white audience, it's like,

"Who are these people?" You know?

So I sent my road manager and told him to go and tell Bill I was there,

but I thought it was the wrong place, so we were going to leave.

So Bill came back out with the road manager, came on the bus, sat down,

and he said, "No, you're at the right place."

I happened to be there

and the opening night was Otis Rush and Steve Miller and BB King.

And he said, "Ladies and gentlemen..."

Now would you believe that? When he said that, you could hear a pin drop.

He said, "I bring you the chairman of the board, BB King."

I've never been introduced like that before or since.

(APPLAUSE) When he mentioned my name, they all stood up.

And for about three or four tunes after that,

they would stand up after every tune.

And I was so touched till I cried, standing up there.

It was like watching a chandelier,

all I could see was his tears and the diamond ring that he had, to wipe his tears.

And I was still washing dishes at the time, I was living with my mom,

and when I saw BB receive that kind of adulation,

that kind of honour...

..I said, "This is what I want."

So I felt weird. Felt real weird.

But I did it.

And after that, I cried back up the stairwell.

It's like when Nat King Cole broke through and they accepted him,

so we kept doing that after the initial '68 period,

working the Fillmore, working colleges,

and then all of a sudden we were able to book BB

into these rock 'n' roll clubs

and other venues that never had black entertainers before.

He shifted a gear from playing in black clubs.

All of a sudden, he was playing for white audiences.

And he shifted a couple of gears right there.

And then BB could do whatever the hell he wanted to do.

In their early days, including mine, you didn't get paid.

You played well and you got drunk if you drank,

and if you played well enough, you got a good looking woman. So this was your pay.

Women just screamed, "BB, BB! BB! BB."

I used to sell BBs. Solomon...

I used to sell BBs to women.

"This is BB King's BBs." (ALL LAUGH)

Oh, yeah, I've been called a womaniser.

I've been called many things pertaining to women.

Most of them are true.

And I love women.

I don't think that most women would want me now at my age.

Oh, a few might, because they might think I've saved a dollar or two here and there.

Well... maybe a couple.

# The thrill is gone

# The thrill is gone away

# Oh, the thrill is gone, baby

# The thrill is gone away

I had been there about eight months, and in the interim,

I had obviously looked at the artist roster that was there

and I'd been a BB fan since I was a kid, literally.

And I kept bugging them, "I wanna produce BB King, I wanna produce BB."

"You can't do that." "Why not?" "Well, you're white and you're too young."

# You know you done me wrong, baby

# And you're gonna be sorry some day

I figured if I could take some different players

and put them around BB,

that something good would happen.

So I pitched him on the idea and he said he was interested,

but he said, "I don't wanna really commit to this for a full album."

So I said, "Well, how about we do half of it live with your band

and then half of it with my band in the studio?"

And he said, "OK, we'll do it that way." So that's Live & Well.

Very shortly after that, it was only, like, eight months later,

we were scheduled to do another album

and I said I'd like to do it all with my band and he said, "Sure, let's do it all the way."

And that was the big success

that resulted out of the second album, The Thrill Is Gone.

# The thrill is gone

# The thrill is gone away

We recorded that maybe around 10, 11 o'clock at night,

and I'm listening back to it around two in the morning, you know,

going through everything that we'd recorded that day,

and I had the idea to put strings on it.

And I think that's probably the best idea I've ever had in my career.

Because I think that's what took it to the pop charts.

John actually brought in The Thrill Is Gone and played it to all of us.

I have that great memory of that.

BB had, really, a million-selling record then.

And that really put BB King into a different category completely.

# THE ROLLING STONES: Little Red Rooster

# I am the little red rooster

Sid was a big proponent of exposing BB to other audiences,

so sometimes he took dates that were not as lucrative financially

in order to bring him to other audiences that were not exposed to him.

My manager had talked with some of the people connected with The Stones

and asked them,

or presented my name to them,

that if they needed a, you might say, warm-up group

or something of that sort, then I was available.

We never saw BB or had anything to do with BB until '69,

when we took him on tour.

# Hounds begin to howl

He would take the band right down to a whisper and it was amazing.

You'd just hear the, "ding, ding," with the little guitar lines,

and then he'd build and build and build into this massive sort of sound with the band.

(QUIET BLUES GUITAR)

Oh!

(LOUD BAND CRESCENDO)

I had never heard dynamics like it and I've never heard them since.

I don't think anybody else has ever achieved that kind of thing that he did.

In a way, I think it was an interesting time

for black blues musicians, because it was probably one of the few times

they got to play in stadiums to a predominantly white audience.

The many people that I hadn't played, you know, to, or hadn't heard of me,

started to, I think, listen to me and pay attention to me from that tour.

# Please drive him home

They themselves would be the first ones to admit

that they started out as a blues band.

They were always very good at playing homage to the...

..the blues artists that influenced them.

We went to record at the legendary Chess studios,

which is on South Michigan Avenue.

They wanted to know how we were doing it and why we wanted to do it.

You know, "Why do you want to play like me?"

Well, it was just very good stuff. (LAUGHS)

And one day I might get there.

They were very, very generous to us, and they passed on all their tips

and gave us all the help and they were very, very kind

and I wanna salute those guys. Most of them are not with us any more.

Of course, one is BB King, who I...

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

The only tune I ever brought in that I asked BB to do,

that was Hummingbird, the Leon Russell song.

And to get Leon to come and play with BB,

getting people to come and play with BB was never a problem.

I played on a song called Hummingbird,

that Leon Russell wrote.

He plays those little obbligatos.

When he sings, he plays a lick, he sings and plays another lick.

Turns out he does that when he talks, too.

So he was talking to me...

"And one time I was down in Tuscaloosa..." Ta-da-tam.

And I listened to it a couple of times

and I started playing the background to it.

And they're not all the same, they're not in the same keys,

they're not the same groove or anything.

And so he had finished it,

we'd finished the song, what key, whatever it was,

and we played the ending, and he didn't say anything.

And he'd start talking about something else and play something else and I'd play that background.

We got into about the third one

and BB started crying. He said...

He said, "I've never had that before."

So that was very touching to me.

I was such a student of his

and I knew what he meant when he said those things on the guitar,

so it was a great compliment.

(BLUES MUSIC PLAYING)

(BLUES GUITAR)

'In 1971, BB King flew the nest

and ventured on his first overseas tour.

This cumulated in a collaborative album called BB King In London.'

# And I love her just the same

OK, we're starting again from the top,

so you get a feel for what I'm talking about. The top of the last one, OK?

# Fast-moving baby

# I can't do nothing to slow you down

# Your speed is supersonic, mama

# And you're faster than sound

# Now, now...

You don't belong to the union, man. (LAUGHS)

When BB came to London to make that album, BB In London,

I was invited to play. It was just incredible.

We're playing away and BB sort of looks at me.

And I thought, "Oh, he wants to end the song."

So I go, "Ba-dam, bam bab-idy bam, bam!"

And he goes, "Too good to lose."

And we came right in again. It was like, "Oh my God!"

It was so great! We just kicked it in again.

And he did pay me a huge compliment in those sessions, because he called me,

"Hey, Ringo, you are just like a clock, tick-tock, tick-tock."

He just had everything. Everything that you'd want out of a performer.

He had the energy, the charisma.

he's handsome, he's got beautiful tone.

Everything had a meaning. Every note... just like a punch.

(CROWD CHEERS)

In 1974, I produced a big event,

I stepped out of my usual life

and produced this big event in Zaire in 1974

that surrounded the fight between George Foreman and Muhammad Ali.

And I brought BB over. BB came without a band

and was backed by the Crusaders, who I was producing.

So BB was knocked out with how that went.

A few years later, I got a call from BB

saying that he really needed to make a record and would I be interested?

So we sat down with Joe Sample from the Crusaders,

who was the piano player, and I put him together with a great lyricist,

a young lyricist named Will Jennings.

We made our first record with BB.

The magic of recording is the danger in recording.

When someone's played something for three years and they come up,

they walk into a studio and play it, they know it, they've been through it so many times.

But when they're engaging it for the first time,

and if you can capture that moment, you've got yourself something special.

# Oh, you know I've had some incredible people

# And I want, yes, I want

# Baby, I want

# Ohh, ohh, what am I gonna have to do?

# Yeah

Oh! (CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

# Hold on

# I feel our love is changing

# Hold on

At the end of that first album, he said, "I made a mistake, I left Sid.

I wish I hadn't done it, it was a mistake. And I don't know if Sid would ever..."

And I said, "What are you trying to say?" He said, "I think we got a winner here

and I need somebody to help me navigate it."

So I said, "Well, why don't I make a call to Sid? You want me to do that?"

And I said, "Sid, I think we got a hit album with BB.

He wants you to come back."

He said, "Did he say that?" I said, "Not in that many words, but I think you should come out."

He says, "I'll take the red-eye."

So the next day...

he showed up at studio and they were there till the day Sid died.

# I'm nothing without you here

There was a time when he was doing 300-plus days a year.

And I'm talking about back in the late 70s

and all through the 80s and the first part of 90s.

'Many people tend to slow down in their 60s.

Not BB King.

His next collaboration with a young band from Ireland

was about to propel BB to a whole new audience.'

Well, you tour with the Rolling Stones and then you go with the popular group of now, Bono and U2.

Huh? (LAUGHS)

My number one.

(CHEERING)

(CHEERING)

Keith Richards played blues records to us

and I began this kind of journey

to discover who were the greats.

And, you know, BB King is not just, you know... great,

he's like... great!

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

Believe it or not, BB King came to Dublin, Ireland,

and he was playing in this club in Dublin, Ireland,

and we wrote this song for him.

It's called When Love Comes To Town.

I went and listened to the tape

and I was able to kind of get some of it together.

I hope you like the song I love the song.

I think the lyrics is really... real heavy lyrics.

You're mighty young to write such heavy lyrics. (LAUGHS)

# Hey, yeah, yeah

# Hey, yeah, yeah, yeah

# I was a sailor, I was lost at sea

I gave it my absolute...

you know, everything I had

in that howl at the start of the song.

And then BB King opened up his mouth and I felt like a girl.

# I stand accused of the things I've said

BOTH: # When love comes to town I'm gonna jump that train

# When love comes to town I'm gonna catch that flame

# Maybe I was wrong to ever let you down

# But I did what I did before love came to town #

We had learnt, we'd absorbed,

but the more we tried to be... like BB,

the less convincing we were.

I'm no good with chords, so what we do is get somebody else to play chords.

Sure. Well, Adrian can do that. There's not much chords in the song. Yeah.

I think there's only two. I'm horrible with chords.

(PLAYS GUITAR SOLO)

When we were working on When Love Comes To Town, we were sitting around...

..and we were showing him the chords.

And he said, "Gentlemen.

Gentlemen.

I don't do chords.

I do this."

I don't know what to do there. I'm just trying... Yeah.

Is that a joke? (LAUGHS)

But there was this great sense of camaraderie in his band

and it was a joy,

just a joy to share a stage with BB King.

That rich, brassy sound they had behind him with the horn section.

And then his... his grace, you know.

He's... He's a lesson in grace.

Thank you. Good night!

All right. Might as well go for it.

A lot of emotion right there. That's all right, young man.

That's all right.

The debt is very much in his direction.

(PLAYS BLUES GUITAR)

The character of any great musician is usually identifiable

by the individuality of their vibrato.

Most players are recognisable

by that particular facet of their playing,

and that's how I would know BB's playing.

I can tell BB from one note, you know, most of us can, I think.

I'd say that's true, yeah. Yeah, I mean, his sound is completely unique to him.

If you can just play one note and somebody else can say, "I recognise who that is."

From one note you know that's him and Lucille.

He can take one note and make it so sexy.

One note, you know, is all it takes.

The note with the vibrato. One note. One note. One note.

(PLAYS BLUES SOLO)

That note is not in the amplifier and it's not even at his fingers,

it's coming from the centre of his heart.

You know, I can hear BB King with the sound off on the TV,

just by looking at his face.

(CHEERING)

I remember Eric Clapton was on CNN

and they asked him who he had never played with,

and BB evidently was watching it, because I was, and he said, "BB King."

The first time I met him, I sat and played with him.

There are pictures of me and him sitting on amplifiers.

It's a long time ago, '66, '67.

And that was it for me. One of my dreams come true.

# BB KING AND ERIC CLAPTON: Riding With The King

BOTH: # I dreamed I had a good job

# And I got well paid

# I blew it all at the penny arcade

The CD he did with me called Riding With The King,

he named it, I didn't.

He had the ideas, most of the ideas for it.

He had them, I didn't. And it was my CD.

But I had told him when we started, because his ideas I respect.

"Next year, don't do anything during that period and we'll do it."

And he stuck to it, you know, it was a commitment we both kept.

When I'm going in the studio to do what I do,

I don't need you, Eric,

nobody else, to show me what I wanna do.

But I listen to ideas.

And I listened to a lot of his ideas

and he had a lot of good ones for Riding With The King.

So I thought, well, the best thing to do is,

we'll just go into the room with a couple of acoustic guitars and see what comes out.

"Whatever you think is good, we'll try it."

And we did. And they were good. Everything.

Except trying to make me play acoustic guitar. I didn't like that.

(LAUGHS)

I had been cut all to pieces

by a guy called Alexis Korner.

Alexis Korner said, "B, I got two Martin guitars, acoustic guitars,

and I got an idea for something I call Alexis Boogie. So let's try it."

But, boy, when we started the recording, he just cut me to pieces.

I said, "A-ha! I will never play another one as long as you're alive!" (LAUGHS)

And I didn't!

I promised I wouldn't do it again,

but Alexis is dead now, so I'll try it.

And he did the same thing, cut me to pieces,

so I won't do it again.

Is he kidding?

From day one with BB, from that day at the Cafe Au Go Go until now,

we just sit down and play and have a few laughs along the way.

It's very relaxed.

These youngsters are playing so good.

I hear them and say to myself, "Oh, God, I might as well quit."

And then another mind says, "How you gonna eat?"

(LAUGHS) So that's one of the reasons I haven't quit.

I think that he's gonna keep on doing what he's been doing.

At the moment, we work three weeks on and three weeks off.

And BB uses the expression, "That's gonna be carved in stone."

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

Yeah!

(CROWD CHEER AND CHANT)

When you mention the name BB King,

everybody can identify with his hometown

and many of them began to know that that hometown is Indianola, Mississippi.

The Medgar Evers Homecoming was originally started by BB King.

Every year, I go down there for what we call Homecoming.

BB came up and stayed at Mississippi,

there was sweltering heat and racism and bigotry.

And anyone who had the nerve and the fortitude

to go out and fight to change that, BB supported,

and Medgar was the one who chose to do that in Mississippi, he was the first to lead us into that.

'In 2008, Indianola showed its gratitude

and opened the BB King Museum.

Every year, tens of thousands of people visit from all over the world

to this little town in Mississippi

to share in one of the greatest journeys ever told.'

All right, put your hands over her head, please.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

OK, one more time.

(FIREWORKS BANG)

You know, the only person who doesn't think BB is great

is probably BB.

People call me King Of The Blues, I've heard it many, many times.

Do you think I think that? No, I do not.

I think there's a lot of people can do exactly what I do

and a lot of them can do it better. They're just not me.

# Did you ever hear a church bell tone?

# Ever hear a church bell tone?

# Did you ever hear a church bell tone?

# Then you know that old B is dead and gone #

He never forgets old friends. If he's aware of a situation with one, or an old band member,

he considers them all family, current and past.

He cares about people. He loves people.

And I think he's the most easy-going person I ever seen.

He wanted to share his talent and his soul with the world

and that's what he did.

He's a one of a kind.

I mean, he's just like...

You know. Unbelievable.

There's only one BB.

Friedrich Nietzsche, Nietzsche...

..said for true greatness to take place,

there requires a long obedience in the same direction.

I can't tell anybody what I wanna hear,

but I have a...

I hear it myself, but I can't play it.

I don't know how to really get it myself.

I think sometimes the sound that I hear

has never been the sound that I wanna hear,

if that makes sense.

It is a little sound that I hear,

but I can't tell anybody about it.

When I hear what I would like to hear, if ever,

I think I'd have to stop, because it probably won't sound as good as I'm thinking it will.

I think that as a lesson in living,

you can look at BB and also learn what it's like to be a man

and get through all those difficult times he had

and come through with the heart that he still has.

It's no mean accomplishment.

I don't think I've done the best that I could have done.

I thought I had.

I thought that I did everything the best I could,

but when I look back, I see there's some slacks.

You can do better.

I have never told him, but I sometimes call him father of us all

because that's the way I see him.

It's very difficult to find words to say.

It's OK.

Excuse me.

He sang the blues and did a great job of it

and rose to a great height,

where even invited by kings and potentates from where he was.

I've never met a king before,

so I'm a bit nervous, but also grateful.

So grateful. Thank you.

I said, "Holy Father, I know you're always doing things for others,

so I wanted to do something for you, sir," I said.

"I'd like to offer my guitar to you."

He took it himself.

He stepped in and took it from the guy and he smiled again.

Then he said, "Happy holidays to you and your family, BB."

Oh, my God. He said BB! (LAUGHS)

# Through the night

# Lead me, oh, Lord

# To the light

# Take my hand...

Some nights, when you wanna go out and just take a walk, clear your head,

or jump into a car just to take a drive,

you can't, Secret Service won't let you, and that's frustrating.

But then there are other nights where BB King and Mick Jagger

come over to your house to play for a concert!

(LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE)

# Come on

# Baby, don't you wanna go?

(CHEERING)

# Ain't no place

# Sweet home, Chicago (CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

And now it's my honour, as Governor of the State of Mississippi,

to proclaim February 15th 2005

as BB King Day for the entire state of Mississippi.

And I urge all citizens to join me and the legislature

in celebrating and honouring this great Mississippian.

(APPLAUSE)

Only God knows how I feel.

I am so happy. Thank you.

(APPLAUSE)

The only thing about the blues, when BB's gone, the world goes on.

It's not gonna stop because BB King leaves, but it'll never be the same.

But I'm here to tell you BB is leaving a legend that's gonna be hard to be beaten.

We just got a BB King in our life.

And there ain't nothing else like it.

When I start to sound as bad as I think I will when I get to a certain age...

(LAUGHS)

..I hope that, you know, that little bell will ring in my head and say, "It's time to stop."

But other than that, I'll wait until the great one upstairs take me away.

Cos I don't feel bad.

I feel pretty good at 85, so...

here I am. That's the best I can answer.

Today, at the Homecoming,

I saw a little boy in the choir

that reminded me so much of little Riley King, me, you know, moi.

And I almost cried thinking that here he is today,

he didn't have to go through what I went through.

What is it that I could've told him,

or could tell you,

that would make the life better for that little guy that looked like a little Riley King?

Then I smile and think... the sky's the limit.

What do you want to do with your music and with your singing?

Play the best that I can,

reach as many people as I can, in as many countries.

In other words, I'd like the whole world to be able to hear BB King sing and play the blues.

# I swear by stars above

# I'll keep my word

# My love #

# Lord, I wonder, yes, I wonder

# Do my baby think of me?

# Oh, I wonder, Lord, I wonder

# Do my baby think of me?

# Now I wonder, Lord, I wonder

# Will my babe come back to me?

# Yes, she been gone so long

# Just can't stand it no more

# Whoa, she been gone so long

# Just can't stand it no more

# Now I ain't got nobody

# Have no place to go

# Yeah, I think when she left me

# Yeah, she went to somebody else

# Oh, I think when she left me

# Yeah, she went to somebody else

# Now if she don't come back to me soon

# Think I'm gonna leave myself #

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