In what would be his 100th year, the legacy of the King of the Blues is alive in Indianola.
“The thrill is gone — it’s gone away for good,” sang B.B. King on his biggest hit, the 1970 crossover smash “The Thrill is Gone.”
But while he was singing from the perspective of a jilted suitor on the tune that earned his first of 15 Grammy awards, when it came to making music and performing, the blues legend, whose career spanned seven decades, never lost the spark.
“Once he picked up that guitar, he transformed into a whole different person,” says daughter Karen Williams. “We knew him as dad and granddad and uncle, brother and father, but he would completely transform once he picked up Lucille.”
King, who would’ve turned 100 in September, left Williams, his 14 other children, and his legions of fans a legacy of determination and perseverance through his music. He also left them the B.B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center in Indianola, where he was laid to rest a decade ago this month.
Born Riley B. King in the Berclair community on Sept. 16, 1925, the future globe-trotting bluesman spent his earliest years in a sharecropper’s shack near Itta Bena and grew up in towns like Kilmichael, where he sang in the gospel choir at Elkhorn Baptist Church, and then Indianola, which he considered his hometown.
If Memphis is where King became “Blues Boy,” later shortened to B.B., this central Delta city of 10,000 residents is where he became enamored with blues music. King busked on Church Street — at the time a vibrant corridor where juke joints were just as common as houses of worship, in contrast to its current incarnation as a sleepy neighborhood thoroughfare — and found he earned more tips for the blues songs he played than gospel songs. The math was simple.
Arriving in Memphis in the late 1940s, King worked as a radio disc jockey with the handle “Beale Street Blues Boy” in acknowledgment of his other gig working the downtown jukes alongside other bluesmen of the day, like Bobby “Blue” Bland. He soon began recording music and putting together his live show, but his first Billboard chart-topper, “Three O’Clock Blues,” in 1952 put him on the national stage.
As King ascended the ranks to headliner at juke joints across the American South, he continued racking up hit singles and earning praise from young rock ‘n’ rollers. But “The Thrill is Gone” made him a household name and ushered him onto the most prestigious stages in the world. He used this platform to entertain as well as educate about the Civil Rights Movement. For nearly 40 years, his annual homecoming concert celebrated the life and work of activist Medgar Evers, who was killed in his driveway in Jackson in 1963. King held those shows at Club Ebony, a famed chitlin’ circuit club he played throughout his career, and which he eventually bought and gifted to the museum.
Later in his life, King worked intentionally to make the B.B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center tell not only his story but also set it in its native context of growing up African American in the Jim Crow South. He wanted visitors to learn about the struggles he and others like him endured and overcame.
Exhibits set the scene as he grew up in Mississippi, but the lens widens with artifacts from his early touring days such as ledgers with entries on how much money he was paid and various expenses. Tucked into a corner of one of those exhibits is a particularly telling piece, a travel mess kit one of his drummers carried for occasions when they couldn’t get service at whites-only restaurants.
But as segregation laws fell and American society integrated, the venues King and his band could play expanded. To wit, the final exhibit at the museum features one of his tour buses that carried them more than a million miles.
Sometimes, he even brought his family along for the ride. While on a weeklong European tour in 1998 that routed them to countries like France, Belgium, and Luxembourg, Williams got a thrill of her own from seeing her father perform on stage for adoring fans.
“I would just be overwhelmed at the crowds of people, the young people who would be completely excited about him,” Williams says. “They were shouting, ‘B.B., we love you!’ and that seemed to just inspire him to even play harder. It just amazed me.”
King’s passing on May 14, 2015, from complications caused by diabetes and high blood pressure, months shy of his 90th birthday, impacted people far beyond the music community. Thousands attended his funeral procession as he traveled Beale Street one last time and lined Highway 61 for the final leg of his journey home to Indianola, where he laid in state in the cotton gin where he once worked, now a wing of his namesake museum. More than 4,000 mourners, including famous friends like blues guitarist Buddy Guy, attended his visitation.
People love the music, which is what draws them to him, but if you have a man who will stay ‘til 3 o’clock in the morning to sign your poster, your jacket, your album cover, your ticket, and have a conversation and make you feel that connection with him — that is why he has fans that have stood the test of time. It was the man himself and the sincere connection he made with his fans.
“People drove from all over to come pay their respects to him that day,” says Malika Polk-Lee, the museum’s executive director. “It was a continuous line, and we had to have help from the state troopers for security on top of the local police force. And it was a hot Delta summer day, but people didn’t care. They stood in line until they got a chance to view him and pay their final respects.”
For all the thrills King brought fans through his music and performances, Polk-Lee believes the measure of the man himself keeps people coming back to Indianola to rediscover his legacy. Almost as much as the music he created.
“Everyone talks about his character, and I think that is how he created lifelong fans,” she says. “People love the music, which is what draws them to him, but if you have a man who will stay ‘til 3 o’clock in the morning to sign your poster, your jacket, your album cover, your ticket, and have a conversation and make you feel that connection with him — that is why he has fans that have stood the test of time. It was the man himself and the sincere connection he made with his fans.”
For more information about the museum, visit bbkingmuseum.org or call 662-887-9539.
Photos by Chad Calcote
