A kerosene lantern fell over and the wooden building caught on fire. He was playing at a dance in Twist, Arkansas when a fight broke out on the dance floor. King and his trademark Gibson guitar, Lucille. On his off hours, he sang for small change on street corners in the nearby towns, sometimes visiting as many as four towns in a single evening. He was signed to a long-term recording contract and began to play in the small-town cafes, juke joints, and country dance halls of the region, as far away as he could travel and still return in time for his radio program. He made his first recording in 1949 and released six singles before the year was out. A few years later, he switched back to using semi-hollow Gibson guitars. King’s most famous instrument, but in the 1950s, you would most likely find him in the studio playing a Fender Esquire or Telecaster. As a radio personality he was known as the Beale Street Blues Boy, later shortened to “Blues Boy” King.

Soon he was playing in local night clubs and was given a regular spot on a black-run radio station. To a farm boy, the city was an intimidating sight, but he was able to stay for a time with his cousin, the well-known bluesman Bukka White, who helped him find his way in the city’s music circles.Īfter a year of playing on the street and learning from the other performers who gathered on Beale Street, he was given an opportunity to perform on the blues singer Sonny Boy Williamson’s popular radio program. In the end, he made the decision to go on his own, and hitchhiked to Memphis with $2.50 in his pocket.

He also joined small gospel groups and urged the other singers to join him in leaving the plantation life for the opportunities of the city. In his teens, he dropped out of school and returned to the Delta, where he drove a tractor on a large plantation. King, “the Beale Street Blues Boy,” at age 23, advertising his show on Memphis radio station WDIA. He arranged with his employer to acquire his first guitar and taught himself further with mail-order instruction books. He dreamed of becoming a gospel singer and learned the rudiments of guitar from his preacher. He was only nine when his mother died. He found inspiration in the music of the African American church. By age seven he was doing the work of a grown man in the field. King’s parents separated when he was only five and his mother took him to live in the nearby hill country in Kilmichael, Mississippi.

King was born to a family of poor sharecroppers on a plantation near the small town of Itta Bena in the Mississippi Delta.

Blues All Around Me by B.B. King