Original subtitles

NARRATOR: In all the United States, the greatest money

Downloaded from YTS.BZ

crop in the South, despite lost and fallen markets,

is the cotton, which last year brought $600 million

Official YIFY movies site: YTS.BZ

to its planters.

[BB KING, "SWING LOW SWEET CHARIOT"] ♪Swing low♪

♪Sweet chariot♪

♪Coming forth to carry me home♪

♪Swing low, sweet chariot♪

♪Coming forth to carry me home♪

[Chopping wood]

BOY: Riley!

BB KING (VOICEOVER): My real name is Riley B. King.

They call me the Boy from Beale Street, the Blues Boy.

So people, instead of saying Blues Boy,

they just started using the word BB, which meant Blues Boy.

WAYNE: BB was my babysitter.

He learned me how to ride a bicycle.

And anything I wanted to do, well, I got away with it,

you know?

Wayne was about the same age, almost as I was.

I'm older.

WAYNE: BB and I was clearing some land out here.

I took a little old ax and hit that tree,

and it glanced off of that, uh, tree.

It cut my foot open.

I was very scared when I cut that foot.

I didn't know what was going to happen.

Riley!

Oh!

WAYNE: And I hollered.

And BB run and picked me up and carried me to the house.

I do remember that he, uh-- he always wanted to play a guitar.

My uncle, 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 as soon as they turned their back.

One day they caught me on the bed fooling with this guitar.

They called my uncle, my mother's brother.

He was one of them mean guys, you know?

So they [Indistinct] get ready to beat me up.

And the preacher told him, don't bother him.

Let him play.

Go ahead and play.

Hot dog!

That was me.

I found a guy, a white person in the area that

had a little red Stella guitar that he would-- wanted to sell.

And I wanted it.

And a fellow name of Denzel Tidwell

had a guitar he wanted to sell for $15.

I was making $15 a month.

So I talked to my boss and asked him if he'd get it for me

and take out half of it the first month and half the next.

And he did.

WAYNE: My father went down there and paid for it for him,

and BB paid my father back, you see, working.

I just seemed to have a habit for that guitar.

And that's where it started.

This one is the first tune, ladies and gentlemen, that

made people know about BB King.

[BB KING, "3 O'CLOCK BLUES"] Now here it is 3

o'clock in the morning

The first session that I did with BB in Memphis,

where it was "3 O'clock Blues" was his hit record that came out

of there.

It was just put the musicians together and do it.

I had heard "3 O'clock Blues" from Lowell Fulson.

And I got to where I could sing it pretty good.

So the Baharis let me sing it.

And it was a hit.

But what they did, they copyrighted the song as if I had

wrote it, but I didn't.

So it was a big selling record for me.

I started then writing songs myself.

[BB KING, "3 O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING BLUES"]

Can you feel it?

(SINGING) I don't know

Uh huh

Well, I started when, uh-- when BB first had that "3

O'clock in the Morning," and he hadn't did too much traveling,

but he was traveling more than I was, you know?

And he would allow me to sit in sometime when he come through

or whatever.

And, uh, I knowed most--

I knew most of his material, you know,

because I liked the way he sang, you know?

(SINGING) Oh, yes!

When you were loving me, baby

When you were loving me

Oh, sometimes, girl, I did love you

Yeah

When you-- when you hear a note that he plays,

you know where it's from, period.

It's nothing extra added.

It's just plain, good feeling.

(SINGING) Here it is 3 o'clock in the morning

Now here it is 3 o'clock in the morning

I can't even close my eyes

MAN: It's pretty early.

It's pretty early.

It's pretty early.

BOBBY: Well, he used to let me drive for him sometime,

when he first started out.

(SINGING) Oh, yes!

When I first met you, baby

Well, I'm just a blues singer, tractor driver, truck driver.

I was a disk jockey for a while.

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

After I'd got quite popular as a disk jockey,

I got a lot of letters, a lot of calls, inviting me to places.

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

then I turned the disk jockey loose and just toured.

I felt kind of proud because I thought

that I'd seen Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Cab Calloway.

I was learning from listening to them from time to time.

And that made me very proud.

So some of them had buses, and I wanted a bus.

And I bought it.

Yeah.

Now, this is BB King's first band,

in which I was the bandleader.

I put this band together.

And not only that, I'm the most handsome cat

on the picture in the band, period.

Floyd maybe was trying to come in second, but--

[laughter]

And I think in '54 or '55, BB King

decided to form his own band, which I was his first music

director of that band.

And we had, uh, quite a--

quite a large group at the time.

When I first met BB King, he was hiring my husband, Cato,

to be his bus driver.

They went to buy the bus.

My family has always been involved with BB King.

My uncle was his first road manager.

My father was his first bus driver and transportation

manager.

My mother managed him for 10 years.

My sister Lora is his IT person, if one person

can have an IT person.

So daddy was driving for a department store

here in Memphis, a delivery van driver.

And he decided to hire daddy to drive the station

wagon on the weekends.

And that began their relationship.

The time I met him, it was 1956.

My mom owned Club Ebony in Indianola.

And she was a promoter of sorts, part of what we called

the Chitlin' Circuit in the South.

My mom, she went out to meet him on the bus.

And she says, well, I want you to meet my daughter.

And she took me out to meet him on the bus with--

the band members were all on there.

We chatted.

And that was the first meeting.

[BB King, "sweet 16"] Baby, you were just sweet 16

SUE: I was 16.

All musicians in Memphis knew B. All the musicians

knew all the musicians.

So I already knew B from right here in Memphis.

And when I went to his dance and he saw me, he was surprised.

He asked me, Floyd, where did you come from?

I said, I'm in the--

--Army.

He said, you're kidding.

He said, I know you disappeared, you know, from home, Memphis,

you know?

And he said, look here.

I'm forming a new band in March.

When are you going to get out of the Army?

And this was, like, in October.

And I said, well, I'm going to get out in November.

He said, meet me at Club Handy.

And he gave me a date, like March 15 or something.

Next year, I'm forming a whole new band.

That's how I got in the band.

So he was thinking that far ahead then?

There you go.

Anytime you're looking at something 30-something years

older than you are today, younger,

you got to be looking good.

I still look the same.

[laughter]

You still look the same.

CALVIN: Life on the road during that period, to me,

was absolutely fabulous, because I'm with a known artist.

I'm making more money than I've ever made in my life.

I'm traveling all over the country.

Sometimes B and I would have a car on the road.

And I was still sitting on the bus with him,

Cato, when the band was playing, and we would rest,

because after that, I would drive the car,

and he would drive the bus.

So we were talking.

He says, we really--

you know, you've got to speed it up a little.

We could cut some time off between here

and our next destination.

I said, yeah, but I can't cut around like you do.

You know, it takes a little bit longer for me to pass some.

I said, I'll tell you what.

When I get in front and I turn the curve

and I can see that I know that you can pass,

I'm going to put my turn signal on, my left turn signal on.

And if you see that left turn signal,

even if you can't see the road, come on, because it's clear.

And I said, if it's not clear, I'm

going to tap the brake just a little bit so you'll see,

don't do it.

It's not the time to do it.

And we used to do that constantly when we'd drive.

And it was fun.

And then B would wake up and say, we got here how soon?

And we wouldn't tell him what we were doing.

He would have a heart attack.

It was fun, though.

BUDDY: I was at the famous blues club in Chicago called 708,

and I'm up there like--

I don't have no record out.

I'm singing "3 O'clock in the Morning,"

"Further On Up the Road" by Bobby Bland.

And everybody's just saying, I don't know who this is.

He's from Louisiana, but he's wild and crazy.

And I looked out in the audience.

There's BB sitting out there with Muddy and Little Walter.

I'm, like, saying, oh, my god.

I ain't got nothing to play now.

I don't know what to sing.

I can't sing, "Sweet Little Angel,"

because he's sitting there, because I knew him, you know?

And I took a break.

And I tried to go around him.

And he caught me, and said, come back.

Come here.

See, you're the only one can take my place.

And I never will forget that.

[BB King, "feel like a million"] I've got a real fine woman

So he told me-- he says, you're going to have to wait

until you're 18 and I don't have to ask your mother.

I said, she would say-- nuh-uh, nope, not going to ask her.

So you'll just have to wait.

So then I said, OK, I'll get--

after 18, he wanted to wait until we

got to Detroit to get married because he wanted

Reverend Franklin to marry us.

And that was in June.

And that's why we got married in June.

When I started working with this band,

I was able to move out of the ghetto, right?

[laughter]

Now I got running hot, cold, hot water.

And then one year, we did 321 one-nighters on the bus.

So you did a lot of eating on the bus and sleeping.

B 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.

We were in Detroit at this ballroom playing,

and Dizzy Gillespie was on the package.

The band would sound so good.

Diz would say, wait, wait, I can't stay down that long.

I'll come over and play with y'all.

Really?

He came over and read the charts.

We had a good time.

He said, wow.

So when we got to New York, he had already put the word out.

Man, y'all need to go hear BB King and those Beboppers.

That's the name of the band?

The Beboppers?

Yeah, that's what Diz gave the name-- gave them.

Go hear BB King and Beboppers.

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

I mean, this man works more than anybody.

And he just-- because the road is his home.

And the people all over the country, his fans,

is basically his family.

I mean, he will take the time to talk to people after he finishes

performing every night.

One night I was in Louisiana.

In Shreveport, Louisiana, a guy came up behind me

and pulled the chair out from under me

while I was bending over to get another--

something to autograph from other people.

And when he did that, when I didn't look back,

when I got ready to sit down, the bench wasn't there.

Well, that wasn't so cool.

So my band and I had a thing then.

We used to carry guns.

And they got into an altercation.

And somebody decided that they didn't like the fact

that a Black person was telling them

to move and get out of the way.

And as they were putting BB King on the bus,

they started shooting at the bus.

[gunshots]

So they had to hurry up and get the bus gone.

After that, BB King had a rule.

There were never guns on his bus.

He did not allow guns.

I mean, he knew that if anything ever happened

and the police walked on that bus

and there was a busload of Black men who are armed,

there would never have been a BB King.

When we'd get to Miami, we'd stay

at this motel for a week that was unbelievable.

You remember that?

Oh, yeah.

For a week.

In one place?

In one place.

That was heaven.

And it just so happened that was the only Black motel in Miami.

Well, it was famous, because you know was staying there with us?

Lena Horne, Nat King Cole, Sammy Davis.

But see, they couldn't stay-- they worked on the beach.

They couldn't stay on the beach.

Now, did y'all play on the beach?

No!

No, we played in some little old place, you know?

But it was nice.

We enjoyed it.

And seeing all those stars like that,

uh, would play on the beach and had to come back to this hotel

where we were living to sleep.

OK.

FLOYD: Segregation was sky high everywhere.

And it wasn't just in the South.

It was in the North and East, West also.

Well, I mean, desegregation of America didn't start until

the '60s.

And BB had been on the road for a good 10, 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 the Chitlin' Circles all over

America.

That's what they called the Black community,

the Chitlin' Circuit.

We survived because we were young.

He was just unusual, somewhat, to never change.

I worked with a lot of people.

That really changed once they got to the top.

Yeah, but not BB.

That was a great period.

It's just you can't hardly find words to really describe

what it really was, this period right here.

MAN: This band, 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.

CALVIN: We were bad.

We were good.

MAN: Yeah.

CALVIN: Yeah.

Daddy was trying to go around a truck.

And he thought he had enough of an easement

to get around the truck.

The truck decided to get over as well.

Daddy ends up into the bridge--

tears up the front of the grid and hit the truck.

So the truck and the bus collide.

Of course, there is a big explosion.

But everybody walked away again.

These men were blessed.

I mean, they walked away from so many things

that could have been terrible.

In 1957, I left the band.

And BB had a change of--

and kind of broke the group down smaller.

And there were a few of us that left the band at that time.

I went back to Houston, went back to school.

DUKE: I was playing at a club in Los Angeles, an after hour club.

And he came by after his gig.

And I had never seen him before, you know?

But someone said that BB King's in the house, you know?

I said, oh, fantastic.

Well, I knew the name.

And I knew who he was.

Well, we were playing strictly East Coast hard jazz.

He walked up to the bandstand and said,

do you mind if I play with you guys?

I said, we'd love it.

He said, but can you guys play the blues?

I said, you're damn right we can play the blues, you know?

You better believe it, you know?

He was a little--

from what he had heard, I guess he was a little skeptical,

you know?

So he got up.

And he played a whole set with us.

We had a ball.

And he said, I'd like to talk to you.

And he said, I've got a big band,

but I'm going to cut it down to a small group, an organ group,

you know?

And would you be interested in playing with me.

I said, no.

I said, I need a rest.

I said, I just came off the road.

I need a--

I'm not-- I need to rest for a while.

As with BB, from beginning of segregation, we did so much.

We traveled.

We lived out of the cars.

And one thing he told me one day, if he was in the water,

and my son was in the water, I wouldn't know who to grab.

That stuck with me all my life.

And we were very close, real family-like.

We were very close.

And of course, then he invited me up to his house.

And we'd hang out together.

And I'd go to some of the gigs, you know, locally.

And I had a ball.

He had-- and then I think the day before he left LA,

I finally told him, yeah, I'll go.

And that's how we hit it off.

Everybody said, that's BB.

I say, no, that's B. To you, he's a legend.

To me, we are friends.

We are family.

But the more you get to know B, you have to love him.

He has such a loving, giving heart.

[BB KING, "EVERY DAY I HAVE THE BLUES"] blues, every day

Every day I have the blues

When you see me worry, woman

We knew that the first tune was always going to be "Every

Day I Have the Blues."

After that, we never knew what the next tune was going to be,

or what key it was going to be in.

My band is fixed to where I can go from one key to another.

And we can play whatever we played in the key

before or after.

And if you don't know your instrument very,

very well, you ain't going to be able to play it too good,

You know, it was every night was fresh.

He hired people to do everything he wanted done.

I had nothing to do, except be a wife, and his vision of it.

I was his driver, his valet, like his bodyguard.

I took him from the country clothes.

I dressed him up like a mafia.

I had him sharp--

come on the stage.

We were in Louisiana somewhere.

And he told me-- he said, I'm going fishing.

He loved to fish.

It's one of his hobbies.

So I said, you're going fishing?

He said, yeah.

Now?

Yeah.

You have a silk suit on, B. That's all I got.

I'm going fishing.

So he went fishing in the suit.

There was one incident.

We stopped at a service station, I remember, to get some gas.

And we couldn't use the restroom.

And I remember BB said, stop putting gas in the bus.

We won't buy no gas.

And then the guy said, oh, no, you don't have to do that.

You know, just no.

If I can't use your restroom, I'm not going to buy your gas,

you know?

And he said, well, you--

OK, OK, you go ahead, you know?

In places like service stations and getting gas,

you just knew where to go and what to do.

And you precluded a lot of that racism.

I didn't do much marching during the '60s because I was

playing music then, and we played a lot of concerts

to raise money for the cause, as we called it.

We played in, I think, it was in Montgomery, Alabama.

And they had the dance floor divided,

white on this side and Black on that side.

And it got too mixed up.

And the police didn't like it.

Everybody was on the dance floor, all dancing together.

And the police got them-- got up and and made us stop playing,

and told the people to go to the perspective sides, you know?

And they didn't listen to the police.

They just acted like they was going to riot or something.

So the cops got scared and let them go ahead and hang out

together.

And we went on with it, you know?

BB and I was in Memphis at the Holiday Inn.

And BB said to me, he said, look--

I said, why don't we do something different?

I said, what do you say?

BB KING: I never saw any Black people in the newspapers that

was doing something positive.

Only two or three that I would hear about--

Joe Louis, the boxer, I loved Joe Louis.

And he said, you know what you're

trying to do is bring Black and white together.

He said, I know things two things that

will bring white folk would like about Negroes.

And he said, that's blues and athletics, football, basketball.

He said, and I'll come every year, and bring my band,

and we'll have-- call it the Medgar Evers Homecoming Blues

Concert.

So we named-- I named it the BB King Medgar Evers Homecoming.

And that's been some 40 years ago.

Well, the first Mississippi homecoming

was in a little town called Fayette, Mississippi, where

Charles Evers was the mayor.

Of course, he's the brother of Medgar Evers.

And BB goes back every year in the month of June, usually

the first week of June, and they started calling it the BB King

Homecoming.

This is home.

I don't know as many people as it is,

but I know the roots of the families.

Most of them have died out or moved away.

But I think a lot of us try to get home

every summer, if we can.

Thinking about the '60s and the marches, I was in Birmingham,

Alabama.

We stayed at a motel called Gaston's Motel.

And they was trying to kill Dr. King.

So Dr. King was, like--

I'm in the room, like, um, maybe seven.

And he's in the room, maybe, like, 10.

So they blew up the room between us, thinking we was in there.

They blew up the rooms of the motel.

[music playing]

Thank you so much now, ladies and gentlemen.

We want to go way back.

Way back.

I discovered a record called Live at the Regal.

And Live at the Regal was this pivotal musical watershed.

Oh, we got to the theater.

And I saw all the recording equipment, you know?

And that wasn't unusual.

There was always someone recording something.

But then we got into the dressing room.

BB said, oh, by the way, guys, they're

going to record us tonight.

I said, they didn't deliver the organ.

You know, what do you want me to do?

He said, well, you're going to have to play piano.

And I said, hell, I can't play no piano.

He said-- he said, well, why don't you

just sit there and pretend.

That's what you do anyway.

And we laughed.

And that's what I did.

I sat there and pretended.

That was it.

And that was the only time I played the piano.

Recordings like Live at the Regal and Live

at the Cook County Jail are two of my favorite live albums

of all time.

It was a good album, yes.

But it wasn't all, like, some said,

the best thing that I'd ever done, though.

Live at The Regal, which I still think

is one of my favorites.

Listen to Live at Regal, and every note, every word,

every song, every everything is a perfect, flawless diamond.

So I listened to it.

And I said, it's the worst shit we've

ever done, because one of the--

I'd never noticed, because I didn't listen to it,

but I really listened to it.

And I said, my God, this is crap.

It's not our best night.

It's one of our worst nights.

It's like all the other gigs we played don't count.

And they picked one night and said,

this is the greatest you ever did.

[BB KING, "YOU DONE LOST YOUR GOOD THING NOW"] Baby,

you done lost your good thing now

Even though he was working every day,

it was not enough to support paying the band and the expenses

we had on the road.

As a result, he started getting into trouble with taxes.

So he really had to keep working.

And I understood that.

But I stayed out on the road for 10 years.

I had a manager, but he was an alcoholic.

And I didn't know it.

And we had Sid as our CPA.

And he seemed to do many more things

than my manager did for me.

SID: He came to me.

I didn't come to him.

MAN: Right.

SID: And he was brought to me because he had

financial problems, big time.

And he couldn't do anything, you know.

[BB King, "The Jungle"] I work hard every day

Monday through Friday night

And the wages that they pay me

I swear they're very light

They take out a little for the state

And a little more for Uncle Sam

How can I ever catch up

And get myself out of this jam?

I'm going to move to the jungle

SID: And he promised to do everything I asked him to do,

which was legal to do, to be able to get out

of his jam, which he did.

Sid helped me out.

He helped me to get out of trouble with the government.

The other thing-- so I said, well, 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.

[music playing]

When it got so much on me, the stress of being on the road

and being conflicted with the roles that I had, um, we talked.

We never argued.

Never.

We always talked.

We never went to bed angry with each other.

We could understand that there would

be times when we wouldn't agree, and we could agree to disagree.

But we talked about it.

And I just told him that I just needed to get a divorce.

And he did say to me-- he came to California after I

left after that and filed for divorce.

And he came to California.

And he told me-- he said, I will quit work, and just

stay in California.

And any kind of work I can do here, I'll do here.

But I won't go on the road anymore.

And I couldn't accept that.

[BB King, "all over again"] Oh, when I read your letter this

morning, baby

She was on-- she rode on the bus for a while, and then, um,

she wasn't riding on the bus anymore, I remember.

And I was with him when he and Sue broke up.

He took that real hard.

I remember that was--

(SINGING) Oh, that I would be better off dead

If you're going to be a traveling musician,

marriage should be something you wouldn't

want to do until you're not traveling a lot,

because it's very few traveling musicians

that I know that have been able and successful in marriage life,

because the nice thing is when you are married.

The terrible thing is when you're being divorced.

It's awful.

(SINGING) Oh, because it's all over now, baby

And baby, and you can count on that

CATO: He has been willing to sacrifice to do those things

that he felt were necessary to promote his genre of music.

[music 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.

We were 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.

It took me a little while to get my feet back on the ground.

And I'm really funny about who plays in the band

and hadn't rehearsed.

I don't like that.

I may not be too professional, but that's

one thing I don't like.

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.

He really checked me out.

I let him sit in, and he was good.

I'll tell you, he was cool.

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.

I was sort of like seeing a kid trying

to get over a puddle of water.

I wanted to help him, and I did.

It's just he's a saint.

He's a blues saint.

So my band and I was going to the Fillmore.

Now, we used to play the Fillmore many times

before Bill Graham bought it.

I happened to be there.

The opening act was Otis Rush and Steve Miller and BB King.

It was something different from, as we call it,

the Chitlin' Circuit, going into the hippie set.

BB KING: So I sent my road manager in there

and told him to go and tell Bill that 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

and came on the bus-- sat down.

He said, no, you're at the right place.

He said, get ready and come on in.

I'll take you in.

When we walked in the Fillmore,

I can remember the light on the walls.

Psychedelic, everything was psychedelic, you know?

And when he walked back down there,

he stood on the stage a bit.

And he said, ladies and gentlemen--

and 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.

(VOICEOVER) You're so kind.

Thank you so much.

And when BB King went on stage--

BB KING (VOICEOVER): Thank you.

--before he hit the first note,

people just stood up and gave him a total standing ovation.

And they were louder than the music.

I remember BB cried that night.

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

It's like watching a chandelier.

All I could see was his tears and the diamond

ring that he had to wipe his tears.

They seemed to think that I was pretty good as a guitarist.

The name was out.

That's BB King.

That's BB King.

I'm sure I'm one of millions who has--

he has done the same thing.

It was Peter Green, or Michael Bloomfield.

Like I said, Mr. BB King gave birth to many, many musicians.

I thank god for music.

It brought us together faster than anything in the world, man.

You know, I think Eric liked me as a guitarist.

He's a good friend.

But I don't think he, um--

I don't think he idolized me like

he did Albert King and a lot of the kids, Buddy Guy, and all

of them.

It was during a period where I'd

become friends with Al Kooper.

And Al Kooper would form this band

called Blood, Sweat, and Tears.

And I think they were opening for BB King.

[music playing]

I thought it would be nice to see BB play live.

Never seen him before.

I don't remember how the jam came about, but there we were.

And I've seen photographs of us sitting on our amplifiers,

you know, playing together.

A youth was in us, and it was--

uh, we were on fire.

[music playing]

Somehow or another, 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 kind

of a-- you might say a warmup group or something of that sort,

that I was available.

And I think they got together like that.

Yeah.

Bangor was the date on Friday.

Yeah.

What was the PC there?

MAN (ON PHONE): 13,000.

What?

MAN (ON PHONE): $13,199.22.

Oh my god!

MAN (ON PHONE): In addition to the guarantee.

Oh my god!

MAN (ON PHONE): Well, that was a home run.

Sid basically was instrumental in BB's career,

bringing him to where he was.

SIDNEY: BB had a lot of success in the Black music area

in the '50s, but nobody knew him in the pop area or the White

area, except certain people that followed, intricately,

musicians and talent.

But the general public did not know who BB King was.

And that was one of the things that I

saw that had to be changed.

TINA: He kind of crossed him over from the Black audiences

to the white audiences.

He had put him with the Stones.

BILL: We never saw BB or had anything

to do with BB until '69.

when we took him on tour.

Back in the days when I was still

learning about blues playing and learning the art of singing

and answering the phrase that you were singing with a guitar

phrase, I think that's where BB King was a master.

The magic of him was he took blues with that jazz flavor,

which Muddy didn't have, and Howlin' Wolf,

and all that lot didn't have that.

He had a jazz touch, so he would put other chords in,

and not just 12 bars.

But he took it to a completely different level.

When we're in the studio, we met

everyone that was recording there,

you know, all our favorites, like Muddy Waters,

Chuck Berry, Willie Dixon.

And I just want to--

I just was thinking about it, and I

was remembering how generous they were to us,

because we must have--

we must have-- they must have thought we were, like, from Mars

or something, you know?

To be honest, I don't think any people--

they'd never met any English people before, probably,

and trying to play their music.

They must have.

But they were very, very generous to us,

and they passed on all the tips, and gave us all the help.

And they were very, very kind.

And I want to salute those guys.

Most of them are not with us anymore.

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

[applause]

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

started to, I think, listen to me

or pay attention to me from that tour.

And it shifted a couple of gears there, right there.

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

[music playing]

BILL: I had been a BB King fan since I

was a teenager in Michigan.

And so I started hounding him.

I wanted to produce BB King.

And the head label head, you know, nah, you can't do that.

Well, why not?

Well, you're too young, and you're too white.

They eventually acquiesced, and they said, well,

BB is coming to town next week.

We'll set up a meeting with you and BB.

And you pitch your idea to him.

And if he says it's OK, then we'll let you do it.

So finally, they wanted him to record me,

because they thought that all of the producers and all that

didn't know the right type of thing for me.

And that's the way that "The Thrill is Gone" came up.

[BB King, "the thrill is gone"] The thrill is gone

Gone, gone away

I had heard this guy named Roy Hawkins do it,

but he did it very slowly.

The thrill is gone, something like that.

And I didn't like that, so I rewrote it.

And every time I'd go to a session, I'd pull it out.

I guess it must have been about three or four years.

And I never could get the sound that I wanted.

[BB King, "the thrill is gone"] The thrill is gone, baby

The thrill is gone away

You know you've done me wrong, baby

And you'll be sorry someday

So later that night, I'm listening back to all the tracks

all by myself, and listening to this, this haunting, minor key,

loping rhythm section here, and how haunting

and everything it was.

I started thinking, I wonder if I put strings on this,

how that would sound.

So I get this call about 6 o'clock

from Bill Szymczyk saying, B!

Yeah.

I was asleep.

I didn't want to be bothered.

B. Yeah, what do you want?

He said, I think that if we do something with this "Thrill is

Gone," it could cross over.

He said, it could go pop.

I don't know about that.

He said, but it's a good record.

And I said, I knew that.

I told you that before I left.

He said, yeah, but I was thinking about.

Would you mind if I put strings on it?

I don't care what you do.

Just let me go back to sleep.

So then we had to overdub the strings.

[BB King, "the thrill is gone"]

And that put a whole new groove on it.

(SINGING) The thrill is gone.

It's gone away for good.

The first time that we did the first rundown,

when we did the string overdub, and BB was in the studio.

And I snuck a glance at him.

And he had a giant grin on his face.

And I knew that I'd made the right choice.

So it worked out for both of us.

The winner is BB King.

Thank you very much, the producer, and all the musicians

that helped make it.

Thank you.

[applause]

(SINGING) Oh, the thrill is gone

I think the success of "The Thrill is Gone"

exposed BB to a much, much wider audience.

And Bill Graham bringing him to the Fillmore

exposed him to another segment of a much wider audience.

And between those two things, I think that was BB's escape card,

if you will.

(SINGING) I am free, free, free now, baby

I'm free from your spell

"The Thrill is Gone" got him out of the Chitlin' Circuit

and into the room at Vegas.

I remember the first time coming to Caesar's Palace.

They had a place called Nero's Nook.

We had to get permission from whoever

was the headliner in the main show room.

And luckily, the person at Caesar's Palace at the time

was Frank Sinatra.

So my manager and I sent him a telegram, asking him if we was,

would he allow us to come in.

And his answer back was, hell yes.

We had the van.

We were playing-- we were-- our next gig,

we were in Saginaw, Michigan.

And we were supposed to be in Vegas.

And we had, I think, four or five days to get there.

So being it was the winter time, we took the Southern route.

And we went the old Route 66.

And I had just finished my driving for, like, 10 hours.

I was zonked out.

So I got in the back of the backbench.

Milton took over.

Cato was sitting in front.

I had rested all day to make this trip to Las Vegas.

The only thing I can say is I went to asleep at the wheel.

RON: The van flipped upside down,

and we had skidded like 150 feet upside down.

I remember just before the vehicle turned over.

But I don't remember what happened after that.

And I'm thinking like, man, was I driving?

Like, I had just fell asleep.

I had driven for a long time.

And I was afraid that it was my fault.

But then I realized, OK, Milton's in the front.

Old man Cato.

Cato came to.

Milton didn't come to right away.

LORA: Mama got this phone call, because the van

was in BB King's name.

And the office was his legal address.

We flipped the van back up, towed it into Albuquerque.

Daddy didn't bother to call.

Daddy was not in the hospital.

Daddy walked away.

But she was livid.

Oh, Milton, he hit his head.

Bobby's tape recorder, it was laying on the floor in the van.

And it wound up hitting me in the head up here.

[sirens wailing]

And the hospital called his wife

in California, Palo Alto, California.

And so she was a nervous wreck.

She's calling the office.

She's calling Polly down in Memphis.

She's calling the office in New York.

She's trying to find out where the hell

Milton is in the hospital, and what's going on, and all this.

And then they had a confrontation with my wife

at that time, because she kept calling, trying to find out

how and where I was.

And nobody could tell her.

Well, Cato and I, we didn't call anybody.

So everybody for two days was like thinking, where the hell

are these guys?

Where's Ron and Cato?

She was livid, because he didn't--

I'm fine.

What am I calling for?

I'd have somebody call you if something happened.

And she was like, you took the van off the side of a mountain.

And he's like, but I'm fine.

So we went up to B's room.

And he just sat there.

And he just looked at the two of us.

Now, the two of us, we'd been on the road

for, like, four or five days.

We'd been in this wreck.

We hadn't taken showers in, like, four or five days,

and, you know, needed shaves.

And we're dirty.

But you know what.

I was standing outside when y'all pulled up.

Y'all looked like hell, man.

I mean, man, that truck look--

[laughter]

B said, why didn't you call anyone?

We said-- well, we didn't think--

we just figured we'd make it to the gig,

and there'd be no problem.

And he goes, yeah, but Milton was in the hospital.

You didn't think to call Polly?

And Cato's wife, Polly, she went out of her--

she went out of her mind.

And the people in New York, everybody was so mad at us.

And we were just so happy to survive this whole thing.

We were saying, why is everybody mad at us?

We flipped over.

We still made the gig.

We're here on time.

And that was one of the things that traveling on the road back

then, that no matter what the circumstances were--

there were earthquakes, there was blizzards,

there was snowstorms, tornadoes--

we always made the gig.

It was always, you've got to make the show.

When we first played Las Vegas and we opened up

for Frank Sinatra at Caesars Palace, and man, I do recall,

B stood out there, looking at that marquee for a long time

with his name on that marquee.

I shall never forget that time.

And I won't forget it, because that was my first time going

to Vegas, too.

You know what I'm saying?

I'm like, that was a long way from the hood.

You know what I'm saying?

[BB King, "power of the blues"]

BB KING: (SINGING) I've been all over Europe

And across the sea

With each new place

It gets clearer to me

Week after week

On tour with my band

You don't have to speak

Because they all understand

The power of the blues

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

I was invited to play.

It was just incredible.

I was on a session called Live in London.

That's when I first met Ringo Starr.

Ringo Starr of the Beatles played drums for me.

A lot of people don't know that.

But on the album, it's a Starr.

That's Ringo.

I don't want to change it from your feeling.

Oh, I think-- you know--

But I can feel it.

It's more in the BB King feel if you put the F in there.

[piano playing]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's me.

Yeah, that gets it.

Yeah, I get it.

(SINGING) Been all Europe

And across the sea

With each new place

It gets clearer to me

The sessions were great, because you

have a lot of memories in your life,

but there's, like, very heavy memories and not--

that session was actually one of mine, besides playing with him.

Because the man, you know, is--

I'm looking at it now where a lot of guitarists

felt if I play a lot of notes, that'll be--

like prove I'm really good, where BB is exactly

the opposite, because the less notes

he plays, because he plays them so well.

It's more important because he has that he has the feeling,

you know?

Yeah!

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.

I had a dream when I got to Africa

I had one hell of a rumble.

I had to beat Tarzan's behind first for claiming

to be the King of the Jungle.

And we brought the very best of, um,

Black American musicians to Africa and Latin musicians, too,

and created this three-day festival that surrounded

the fight, and filmed it.

And it was a remarkable event.

And I brought BB over.

[BB King, "sweet sixteen"]

BB KING: (SINGING) Oh, I wonder what in the world

Is going to happen to me

They-- you know, all he had to do is-- he'd just walk on stage.

The women just scream.

Oh, come on, BB.

BB.

BB KING: Now, wait a minute.

BB.

BB KING: Solomon.

How do you sell BBs?

BB KING: Solomon.

How do you sell BBs to women?

Tell them, this is BB King's BBs.

Damn, yes.

I'm a womanizer, if that's what you want to call me,

because I like all women.

I ain't never met a woman yet that I didn't like.

But not to sleep with them all.

But I like them.

I think they're the angels of the Earth.

There was some good times.

SOLOMON: Sam Goldberg.

Sam Goldberg.

SOLOMON: The promoter.

Yes, sir, Sam.

SOLOMON: Biggest crook in all the world.

Only Black guy I ever known named Goldberg.

[laughter]

SOLOMON: Really?

Yes, sir.

SOLOMON: He'd booked the show, man.

He'd have Dinah Washington, Nat King Cole, all of them dead.

All the people on the show.

[laughter]

Selling tickets like a big dog.

BB KING: I don't know how he got away with it, but he did it.

He would do it every time.

He's incredible.

You know he's going to screw you.

So you just take some Vaseline.

[laughter]

SOLOMON: Just hand him the jar.

Hand it with the top off.

Say, the top's off.

It's gone.

BB KING: With no grease.

Yes, sir.

Him and his wife, Bertha Norman.

BB KING: Bertha, yeah, I remember her.

She and my ex-wife was very good friends.

SOLOMON: Really?

BB KING: Yeah.

SOLOMON: The biggest thing I ever

remember in Norfolk, Virginia, Sam Goldberg had us down

there in Norfolk, Virginia.

And it was a packed house.

That's what-- we're going to get paid.

Yeah.

That much money.

Maybe.

Bertha is in the box office.

There's no problem.

Yeah.

But he--

She said, y'all going to get your money.

Don't worry about it.

Don't worry.

He had time.

You're going to get your money.

The next thing we knew, police is coming.

We're on stage, singing.

Police and all kinds of police cars, and ambulances and stuff.

They carried Bertha.

I said, what happened?

Said, Bertha got robbed.

Bertha got robbed.

Somebody hit her in the head and robbed her

and took all the money.

So where's Sam at?

I don't know.

He's looking for the man that robbed her.

And we're looking for him.

SOLOMON: He robbed his own old lady, hit her

in the head with the gun-- bam!

[laughter]

His bus broke down once.

And he called the promoter and told

him to say I'm going to be late because my bus broke down.

No, come on.

He said, I'm sold--

it's sold out.

And as long as you make it here, saying he made it about,

I guess, an hour.

I'm not sure.

An hour, an hour and a half late, and so the guy

said, you're too late now.

We don't need you.

So he said, well, I called you and told you my bus.

Well, I know that, but I can't do nothing about it now.

He done collected all his money.

The house is full.

And he said he was--

thought about just turning around and going back.

So he said, no, these are my fans.

I'm going to go on and play one.

And he said, when he just went and plugged up and got

the microphone, and said, well, I think all of y'all should get

your money back now because I'm not going to get paid.

And this is free.

So you should have seen the promoter come running.

We did this gig.

And they paid us in counterfeit money.

Remember?

RON: Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

They paid us in counterfeit money.

And every time B made the payroll, he would always--

we signed the check, and they'd give us cash.

You know what I'm saying?

And so when we got ready to check out the hotel,

we were paying in counterfeit money.

And then all of a sudden, the FBI and the police and everybody

swooped down on the hotel, and for all of us.

And they said, yeah, they got a lot of nerve.

All of them up in here with counterfeit money.

He says-- but I do remember that very well.

Yeah, that was pretty wild.

[music playing]

We were playing the Jazz Fest in New Orleans.

And BB is talking.

All of a sudden, someone taps me on the shoulder.

And I look up.

And it's Nina Simone.

And I'm thinking, like, well, OK, this is cool.

This is Jazz Fest.

And BB and her probably figured something out, and all this.

And then she turned to me, and then she

said some very unkind things to me,

and told me in a nice way of putting it, that I should just

go home and go back to my kind, and not

participate in this event anymore,

or any other events with BB King.

And then old man Cato, he said, what's wrong with you, boy?

You done lost your mind?

Get your ass back up on that piano.

B is going to have a fit if you're not out there.

And I'm like, OK, whatever.

So I get up on there.

I got fined $50 for that.

And afterwards, B said to me, what the hell were you thinking?

And I said, I don't know, B. I said,

you Nina Simone came up to me.

And I thought you worked it out with her to-- to jam

on the festival.

You know, it happens all the time.

He goes, well, did I tell you about it?

I said, look, I'm just a sideman.

I'm not privy to all your plans and whatever you decide to do.

He said, don't ever get up from the piano unless I tell you to.

So that was the last time that ever happened.

And then he read about it in the .

And he gave me my fine back.

And he took me out record shopping,

because we were both audiophiles.

And he bought me about $200 worth of records, which

was a ton of records back then.

Ron Levy at the piano, and the band, fellas.

I always thought that our band together and as a unit,

as a family, we had this attitude that it didn't matter

who else was on the bandstand.

They're going to get their ass kicked.

And we had, like, young guys back in the day,

like the young bloods, and then we had the old vets.

And then it was like a really-- it

was like a successful football team or baseball team

or whatever.

The old vets taught the young guys real stuff.

But then the young guys brought a new energy and a new blood

into it.

It's like I said.

When we played and opened up for Frank Sinatra,

I knew who that was.

I mean, you know what I'm saying?

I mean, in other words, you don't get no bigger than that.

You know what I'm saying?

I mean, I've been looking at him--

I've been looking at him on TV--

you know what I'm saying?

Since I can remember.

Frank Sinatra is so sophisticated and so classy

and so perfect.

You're doing a rock concert.

You might get away with a bad note here or a bad note there.

You know what I'm saying?

But that situation--

You made a career out of that.

[laughter]

I'm still doing it, too!

Yeah.

Ain't got no different.

[U2, "WHEN LOVE COMES TO TOWN"] Hey, yeah, yeah

Hey, yeah, yeah, yeah

I was a sailor

BONO: We went on the road together in Australia and New

Zealand, the Lovetown Tour.

Wow.

(SINGING) I was a fighter

I could turn on a thread.

It was unbelievable.

This created a new audience for BB, a younger audience.

Man, when he would finish his set,

it would be standing ovations.

It just opened up a new-- a complete new audience for him.

I think it extended his career, really.

U2 loved it.

They loved it.

BONO: Where is he?

King of the Blues, BB King!

Yeah.

Would you like to sing?

A song.

I think that the lyrics is really--

real heavy lyrics.

You're mighty young to write such heavy lyrics.

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'm no good with chords.

So what we do is get somebody else to play chords.

Sure.

Well, Edge will do that.

There's not much chords in the song.

I think there's only two.

I'm horrible with chords.

All right, he would build his chords.

He built his own chords based off the Schillinger system.

OK, yeah.

Mathematical formulas for each chord that he likes.

And what he'd do is build each chord.

And then the chord that he would like,

he would make a fret for it, and he'd play it.

And if he doesn't like it, he'll cross it out.

[guitar playing]

We've got BB King's orchestra up here.

Boogaloo!

Well done.

What U2 had done to make their show a little different,

they incorporated the horns from BB's band.

And we created the horn parts for them.

We were doing "Angel of Harlem,"

and he broke into "Caught in a Trap" by Elvis.

[U2, "angel of harlem"] Harlem

Yeah, Angel of Harlem

We're caught in a trap

We can't go on

Because I love you too much, baby

But it was really funny because what he was doing,

it fit.

He could make anything--

he'd started singing-- fit whatever,

wherever he was in the song.

[U2, "when love comes to town"] That was the day before love

came to town

He has a heart and a spirit as big as a mountain.

He has a voice like thunder.

His music is as vital and alive as it's ever been.

And when Mr. BB King plays the blues,

there is nobody, but nobody who comes close.

(SINGING) Baby, I was wrong to ever let you down

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

He is, as Keith Richards, um, describes, um, a specialist.

Very special specialist.

We used to play the Regal Theater.

And BB would come on, and they'd be like, boo, we

don't want to hear no blues.

We want to hear Chi-Lites, or whoever the main star was.

But he kept on playing.

It seemed like nobody wanted to hear the blues much anymore,

especially BB King style.

So I decided to try to let everybody

know how I felt about it.

And this is what I said.

[BB KING, "NOBODY LOVES ME BUT MY MOTHER"] Nobody loves me

but my mother

I think boss said when he started doing those festivals,

he said, playing the blues is like being Black twice.

Black twice.

Yeah.

Because he wouldn't get no respect.

That's where I was.

So when we did start playing more white venues,

and I started seeing more white musicians playing blues music,

then I started being like, wait a minute.

This our music.

I need to get on with the program,

and start paying attention.

So I started embracing the blues and started saying,

man, I played with BB damn King and you just

played on the CD you just got, and Blues for Dummies.

And you're making all this money,

and I'm with the real cats.

So that's when I started changing my attitude

about working with BB King.

It was like, I'm with BB King.

He started getting-- you know.

[bb king, "you are my sunshine"] You are my sunshine

My only sunshine

You make me happy

When skies are gray

You'll never know, dear

How much I love you

Please don't take my sunshine away

You got it now.

The first time I toured with him, it was back, actually,

in 1998.

And I was doing a tour with BB.

It was his tour, but it was a package.

It was BB King, Buddy Guy, Johnny Lang, and myself.

(SINGING) You are my sunshine

My only sunshine

You make me happy

When skies are gray

You'll never know, B

How much I love you

Oh, please don't take my BB King away

BB Has influenced me many ways.

He's influenced me to be a better listener, a better

person, more humble.

He's influenced me to be more confident when you are on stage

and to be really in the moment.

[BB KING, "LET THE GOOD TIMES ROLL"] Hey, everybody,

let's have some fun

You only live but once

And when you're dead, you're done

So let the good times roll

JAMES: When I first joined the band, like I said,

Calvin Owens was the band leader.

I just started doing the little dancing thing and the head

shaking thing in the beginning, just to have something to do,

because I enjoyed the music.

Calvin had told me one time, well, man, you

need to stop doing that, because you're distracting B.

And B heard him and told me.

He said, no, no, no no, it's fine.

Keep on doing it.

So then after that, then he gave me-- he started introducing me,

which every night he would introduce everybody

in the band at the end of the show.

And he started to introduce me as Boogaloo.

Which I feel the only proper way to introduce this young man,

we all have to move a little bit.

So are you ready?

AUDIENCE: Yeah.

[music playing]

James "Boogaloo" Bolden, James Bolden, ladies and gentlemen.

My nephew and conductor-- he can shake a little bit, too--

Walter Riley King, Walter King, ladies and gentlemen.

When I got called for the gig the first time,

which was '78, '79, I was doing a lot of-- doing studio work,

and also playing shows.

[music playing]

I came out in the summer of 1985.

BB KING: This young man was born in Omaha, Nebraska, USA,

another senior member of the group.

Will you make him happy, please?

"Mighty Mike," Michael Doster, Michael Doster.

Then Walter calls me at 8:30 in the morning.

And my father would always say, why does that Walter King always

call so early?

And he would wake everybody up.

And he calls one morning and says,

hey, you want to play with BB?

And I thought he was joking.

I thought he was pulling my leg.

And he says--

I said, sure.

He said, well, we need you in Indianapolis tomorrow night.

[music playing]

This was in 1991, maybe, I would say 1990, '91.

That's Mr. Vantrease, Ernest Vantrease.

Walter called me to come out.

I wasn't at that time working with Ray.

We weren't on the road.

I was still working with Ray, but he

called me to come up to Indianapolis

at the Beef and Ball.

And so we did two nights.

So I had the chance to really play with him,

even before I really joined the band for only two nights,

though.

That was a lot of fun.

[music playing]

When I joined BB King's band, BB King

was like a strike of lightning.

Wherever it hit, he's going to leave some damage.

It was like, bam!

When he came on stage, he was on fire.

[music playing]

I met BB King on May 24, 1990.

So I had just turned 13.

I played-- I've played shows with BB King

pretty much every year for the last 22 years.

He gave me a break and a real lease on life, really.

So when I discovered BB King, I realized very quickly

that this country had a heritage of its own

and was really the originator of this sound,

and which British were then kind of reinterpreting.

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

that defines a genre of music.

It was one of those guys who's like a musicologist, where

he understands the value of what's come before,

and the value of what's come now.

And it's all about the greater good.

His blues style incorporated not only the old style,

what he learned and listened to when he was growing up,

but he loved Ellington.

He loved Basie.

He loved all the different kinds of jazz, you know?

And he listened to that.

At the time, he had the bass player.

It was Russell Jackson.

And Russell could do the slap bass,

and he could do the thumb thing.

And so BB, he would let you be yourself within the group.

[music playing]

Believe it or not, he was the first blues bass player

to do that in a blues setting ever.

And BB encouraged him to do it.

He was sort of like the guy that, oh,

you want to learn how to swim?

[laughter]

And walk away, you know?

If he comes back, he'd say, oh, you learned how to swim.

MICHAEL: The boss had a way of teaching

you to live with the consequences of what you did.

So if he knew you had been out all night partying or something,

he would kick off a tune you hadn't played in a long time,

or kick it off real fast, and give you a solo,

and go, oh, son, you want to stay out all night, huh?

I'll show you.

[music playing]

Now, I like "Let the Good Times Roll,"

the way he would play when it was in the groove.

[vocalizing]

[BB KING, "LET THE GOOD TIMES ROLL"]

Now, if he drank that Geritol, double extra spiked Geritol

before the show.

[vocalizing]

He'd play so hard and fast.

And if you pulled back a little bit,

chop, chop, chop, chop, chop.

Come on now.

Keep up with me.

Then at the end of the night, I say, man, you sure

were playing that tempo fast.

My hands cramped.

Well, I didn't tell you to be a drummer, son.

See you later.

You never let him know that you were sick,

because he was going to work you to death if he

knew you were sick.

That was just his way and his style.

If you-- I had food poisoning.

And man, I couldn't--

I couldn't even make it to the toilet.

I had to crawl to the toilet.

And that night, I made the show.

I got to the show.

I was still, I mean, very sick, very, very sick.

And he saw that I was sick.

I played more solos that night than I ever played.

By the end of the show, I was totally well.

I had played all the illness out.

TONY: OK.

We're talking about Albert King and BB King and Bobby Blue

Bland.

When we would do those shows, Albert's whole attitude

was like--

he felt like, well, Bobby, they love Bobby more than they do me.

And BB, everybody loves him, so I'm just

going to burn both their asses up.

So when he'd go out on stage, he'd say it on the mic.

Hey, are y'all ready for the blues?

Well, I'm up here first.

But we've got Bobby coming up, and BB,

but I'm going to make this stage too hot for them to come home.

That's his attitude.

I'm going to burn it up.

And he'd say it on the mic.

And he'd say, BB, I hope you hear me,

because I'm going to make Lucille cry tonight.

Me and Lucy, come on!

[music playing]

And BB would be in the dressing room, holding court,

talking with the dressing room door cracked open

so he could listen.

Oh, you heard what he said about Virginia.

So when he came on the stage, now he just--

Albert King just come off the stage, and say,

hey, B, don't go out there right now.

That stage is too hot.

OK.

When he comes on the stage, he'd say, B, B, King.

[vocalizing]

[music playing]

He'd come out there on fire.

You hear me?

He's like, I'm going to show him.

But he was also the only one that could control Albert

as well.

That's right.

Albert was known for being ornery and salty.

[music playing]

I had a gum disease.

And the teeth were just coming out.

On top of that, I had this bone loss.

I told BB about it.

And I say, well, I won't be able to play.

I won't be able to perform--

play any parts.

I said, I can only do about 5 minutes at a time.

And he said, well, you say you can dance, can't you?

I said, yeah.

He said, you play tambourine on the gig, don't you?

I said, yeah.

He said, well, when you can't play, play tambourine and dance.

He never complained, not one time.

He never fussed about it one time.

He never asked me, are you at the point

where you can play more or not?

Never.

He let me progress gradually as it progressed.

It took about a year and a half before I could actually

really play a show.

[music playing]

And so having experienced that and gone through that,

every moment that I could play was a joy,

because I started realizing this might be the last one, you know?

And tomorrow, I may not be here to do this, you know?

[music playing]

He's done all the Crossroads so far.

It is beyond description, because he has

ears that you wouldn't believe.

So you-- we all do, to a certain extent,

but he is beyond anything.

So if you mimic him, if he throws out a phrase,

and you manage to articulate it back at him, he will take that,

and then modify it.

I mean, he's always-- you know.

He's a statesman, isn't he?

He is a diplomat, a statesman.

And he's a very kind, generous man, and very wide awake.

And he's very powerful, too.

I mean, the amount of responsibility

he's had carrying this, this particular torch all this way is

quite phenomenal.

And he's a dear friend, of course.

So it's hard for me to actually see him in perspective

sometimes, because he's been so close in my life.

But above all, he's a musician of such magnitude

it's beyond description.

I heard you singing Al Green.

So you have started something.

You've got to keep it up now.

You can do it.

Come on.

You can do it.

SUSAN: (SINGING) Sing, oh, sing

Sing your song

Come on, Mr. President, sing.

(SINGING) Come on

SUSAN: Yeah!

(SINGING) Baby, don't you want to go?

SUSAN: Yeah!

(SINGING) Come on

SUSAN: Sing.

(SINGING) Come on

Baby, don't you want to go

SUSAN: Yeah, I'll be there.

(SINGING) Same old place.

(SINGING) Sweet home Chicago

SUSAN: Yeah!

Thank you.

On the drums, Tony Coleman.

All we knew was Jon Brewer was with us doing a documentary.

And we knew there was going to be guests,

because we've had guests.

Many, many, many times.

All the time.

Whoever you can imagine, we've had.

So we weren't freaking out about anything.

It was like, well, uh, Susan Tedeschi is coming up.

[applause]

Hello.

Don't kiss me like that.

Yeah, OK.

We saw her two months ago.

So what else?

We got a problem?

What are you looking over there for?

And then when Derek looked back, you look at her.

He let his eyes stay on her a little too long that time.

Derek caught him.

Ron Wood's going to be here.

[music playing]

Good.

Oh, and Slash.

It was like just another day.

And I ain't saying this because you sit here.

But see, Walter, Walter was the band leader.

Walter, go tell his uncle.

He didn't want to.

But he said--

I'm sure he didn't.

Today-- he'd get that high voice.

Today, we've got a show.

It's being recorded.

And they wanted me to make a DVD of this.

BB had been sick a long time.

He'd been sick.

The dementia and Alzheimer's had been progressing slowly.

He'd had always been able to cover it up.

We didn't even know.

The band didn't know.

We just knew things were different.

It wasn't-- he wasn't being as fluid as he normally would be.

He doesn't want to be told.

He don't, no, no.

But he realized it's time to kick ass.

So let's do all our good stuff tonight.

[bb king, "i need you so"] When day is gone

Oh, I need you so

I long to hear

Your little knock on the door

Oh, that was a lot of fun.

I saw a lot of people that I've heard of, never seen before.

[music playing]

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.

[cheering]

I said, good evening, ladies and gentlemen!

TONY: Glastonbury, if you remember, to us--

I know for me--

it was just another gig.

We were just going to work.

That's what we were saying earlier.

We didn't care nothing about no Glastonbury or none of that.

What we felt like was, man, it's cold and muddy.

And I don't want to be in that rain.

[cheering]

He always liked when the audience showed some enthusiasm.

That made him feel good.

He was like turning around, basically saying,

you've got something?

They're ready to to hear us.

That's how he was.

BB wanted to be a better musician than he was.

He wanted to be a great guitar player.

He wanted to be highly intellectual

on most of everything.

That's why he was always encouraging people, other people

by, hey, do this, do that, because he wanted

to be better than who he was.

He used to say a thing.

Sometimes it would be something going on.

It might-- the hotel might not be up to par or something

like that.

And he'd say, it's only one day.

You can live here for one day.

It's not like you're going to be here the rest of your life.

This is just one day.

We'll make today.

Tomorrow, it'll be somewhere different.

And that's how he looked at it.

And he brought that to me.

I said, OK.

Oh, I can deal with that then.

I can deal with that today.

Tomorrow, I won't have to deal with it.

Tomorrow, it'll be something better.

To him, it was all about educating.

There was something you needed.

You needed to hear the blues.

You needed to know where it came from.

You needed to know the difference in Muddy Waters

blues.

(SINGING) Whoa, daddy.

And BB King's blues.

(SINGING) Sure and everything

And the only way he knew to get the message across

was on the road.

And to him, everything was an education.

Everything was teaching somebody something.

To him, that was life.

Because I didn't have an education,

I still like to see planes fly, and wondered about much of it,

because I was a good cotton picker.

I was a good tractor driver, and many other things

I was pretty good at.

But I just didn't have the schooling.

It was an educational thing.

He wanted the people to know.

And he got the message across.

And people learned to love the blues.

He said, Boogaloo, as long as I can get through a show,

no matter what, as long as I can get through the show, promise me

you won't make me come off.

You won't make me stop playing.

So it went on and on.

And I got a lot of criticism, because a lot of people

thought that the band, and myself, and the management

were forcing him to play.

But that was not it.

He wanted to play.

He had already set it up.

As long as he can get through the show, no matter what,

then for us not to come to him and try to force him to quit.

BB King said something to me one time.

We were talking about the road, and the number

of days on the road.

And he said, Lora May, I don't know anything else.

He said, and I want everybody to hear the blues.

The most gigs that I worked with him was 333 days

continuously, mostly one-nighters.

We were on the road, doing one-nighters.

And the car that he was traveling in was in an accident.

And when it flipped--

A piece of metal went through his arm.

And it had severed it enough that they thought they

were going to have to take it.

But they were able to save it.

And by the time the car flipped over,

the guitar came out and kept the car from crushing him.

Then they thought he would never have the strength

to play again.

But he overcame all of that.

And that would have to be '60-something.

Yeah.

And I think right after that, I think

that's when he recorded the Live & Well album.

BB King was King of the Blues since the beginning of the '50s.

He was the top blues artist all across the country.

And they did 300 dates a year, every year

for 20 years before I even joined the band.

He said, I'm not going to stop until God says I have to stop.

He says, when God says, I have to stop, I'll stop.

He said, until then, I'm going to keep going.

He said, because I don't know anything else.

I've never known anything else.

He said, I told you a long time ago

I knew two things, picking cotton and the road.

When I started to sound as bad as I think I will

when I get a certain age, I hope that, you know,

that little bell will ring in my head.

It's time to stop.

But other than that, I'll wait till the great ones

upstairs takes me away.

All the friends I know that was jazz, blues,

or whatever else, they didn't retire.

They just dropped.

When I was there on stage with him,

I can tell when he's playing well.

I can tell when he needs a little help.

I can tell if--

there were certain things that would give it away.

And I always hoped that I was there for him

as much as he was there for me.

The last show was in October 2014.

He had done the opener, and still, he wouldn't come out

of the dressing room.

So we did a few more songs.

So finally, he came out, and he came on stage.

MAN: We were playing at the House of Blues in Chicago.

The house was packed.

It was packed with people.

They were so enthusiastic, you know, with him

coming out and coming on.

So I didn't expect anything different than what

we had always done.

ERNEST: I actually knew that it wasn't right,

something wasn't right.

And as soon as he took his pick and strike

his guitar, when he'd strike the strings, and the guitar pick

or whatever you call it, went rubbing across the strings

and not making a sound.

It was just all of a sudden he forgot how to play.

He wasn't capable of playing anymore.

He actually forgot how to play the guitar.

That's something you think would never, ever happen.

So he was extremely weak, extremely weak.

But then when I saw him take his guitar off

of his shoulder, the straps off, and he laid it on his lap

with the strings, I think it was down.

They weren't-- I mean, it wasn't where you could strike it this

way.

The strings were laying down.

So when the people saw that, they

didn't know if it was a part of the show, as far as I thought,

or just what was happening.

And I didn't know what was going on.

And he took Lucille off and put it on the stand,

and sat there and stared at it.

And I've never seen him take Lucille off and put it back

on the stand.

He had a frozen pose, where he was leaning over his right knee.

And I'm thinking that there was maybe at that point

they felt like he might have collapsed,

or could collapse out of the chair.

I don't know.

And then that's when I remember they're calling it.

And Boogaloo came across the stage with the towel

and had the curtains pulled.

To have to get the guitar, and then tell him--

I told him.

I told him that was it.

I told him, I said, the show's over.

We finished.

And he said, OK, you know?

And he waved to the audience and came off the stage.

And the look he had on his face was like he was tired.

In a daze.

Mhm.

I wanted to help, but I knew there was nothing else to do.

It couldn't be done.

I went into his dressing room, and he

was laying on the sofa in his dressing room.

And he was laying there.

I said, how are you feeling?

He said, I don't feel too good.

So they called the paramedics to come.

And he told me-- he'd say, Boogaloo,

you've been with me a long time.

He said, you never, ever heard me say this.

He said, I'm done.

See?

This is it.

I'm done.

I did what I could for him.

It's like the death of an era.

And the last time I seen him, I said,

you need to give it up, man.

He was in a wheelchair.

That hurt me most of all.

He was in a wheelchair.

And he'd get up and sing.

And I knew right then and there that this

is what he wanted to do-- was just working,

work himself to death.

I was in the museum today for the first time.

And I saw this big old picture of me on the wall with him.

It touched my heart.

And I felt like a--

we'll always be connected.

My greatest experience is having played with BB King.

It tops it all.

And I said, well, I just wanted

to tell you that anything you need, any time, let me know.

I'm here for you.

I said, you've been like a father to me this whole time.

And it's been a pleasure.

It's been an honor.

And I've enjoyed every moment being with you.

And he shook my hand.

And he said, enjoyed every moment with you, too.

And that was the last time I saw him live.

[bb king, "a mother's love"]

(SINGING) I have seen a rainbow

Circled across the sky

I have stood on a mountain

And watched an eagle fly

Everything he did was about being classy, dignified,

and respectful, and loving, and giving out love.

It wasn't an ego.

It wasn't about, I'm important, or I'm better than anybody.

He was always inclusive.

He wasn't exclusive with people.

It was like, come on in.

That's the way he was.

I mean, all over the world, he never changed, no matter what

the situation was.

He was always BB King, always.

It was just--

it was just hard to see, because I was so used

to seeing him so vibrant and so alive,

and relishing every moment of every day, you know?

(SINGING) More beautiful than gold

SUE: I was glad he was at peace.

I believe he achieved some things that even

he had not envisioned.

And now it's my honor as governor

of the state of Mississippi to proclaim February 15,

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 honoring this great Mississippian.

(SINGING) From above

[applause]

But I haven't seen anything

To match the wonder of a mother's love

SUE: Well, he had good times.

He had a lot of highs.

Meeting all the different presidents that he met,

being at the White House, meeting the Pope.

(SINGING) Mother's love

SUE: Going to Russia.

He sent me a picture with this hat on.

And I told him, Russia?

You don't like cold.

I don't have to stay there, but I'm going.

He always tried to do the right thing.

He really did.

And the fans, he just adored them.

And I think they adored him.

[SUSAN TEDESCHI, "THE THRILL IS GONE"] The thrill is gone

Oh, the thrill is gone away

Oh, now you done me wrong, baby

Oh, lord, and you're going to be sorry someday

[applause]