B.B. King: Why his guitar was called Lucille | Ultimate Guitarist Reunion

Why fans still care

B.B. KING once said he knew music was his life when people on street corners started putting money in his hat. He spent the next six decades making sure the hat never stayed empty for long. In 1956 alone he played about 340 one-night shows.

That’s the thing about B.B. He wasn’t a myth you had to take on trust. He was on the road, in your town, most nights of the year, with a guitar he called Lucille.

The Recording Academy names Eric Clapton, Who’s Who number 3, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Who’s Who number 4, Jeff Beck, Who’s Who number 15 and Keith Richards, Who’s Who number 31 among the guitarists he influenced. He picked up 15 Grammys along the way, and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame simply calls him the “King of the Blues”.

Early life and training

Riley B. King was born on 16 September 1925 on a plantation near Itta Bena, in the Mississippi Delta. PBS places it in a cabin near Berclair, and notes that nobody officially recorded the birth.

His parents, Albert Lee and Nora Ella King, were sharecroppers, according to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas. They split up when he was small, and his mother took him to the hill country near Kilmichael. She died when he was nine. After that his grandmother raised him.

He left school after 10th grade and worked the fields. In 1943 he moved to Indianola, Mississippi, to drive a tractor. He taught himself guitar from books he ordered by mail. “I’d order those books and I studied them religiously,” he said in 2004.

He also played for change. That’s when he knew, he said: “When the people started putting the money in the hat.”

Some time around 1946 or 1947 (sources split on the year), he headed to Memphis and stayed with his cousin, the bluesman Bukka White.

Career chapters

1. 1948On air at KWEM and WDIA, Memphis
2. 1949The Twist fire; Lucille gets her name
3. 1952“3 O’Clock Blues” goes to number 1 on the R&B chart
4. 1965Live at the Regal released
5. 1968Standing ovation at the Fillmore, San Francisco
6. 1969“The Thrill Is Gone”
7. 1987Rock & Roll Hall of Fame
8. 2000Riding with the King with Eric Clapton, Who’s Who number 3
9. 2015Dies in Las Vegas, 14 May

Beale Street Blues Boy 1948 to 1950s

His break came on the radio. In 1948 he played on Sonny Boy Williamson’s show on KWEM, and that led to a show of his own on WDIA in Memphis. On air he was the Beale Street Blues Boy. That got cut to Blues Boy, and then to B.B., and it stuck for the rest of his life.

He made his first records in 1949, for Bullet in Nashville, and signed with RPM in 1950. Then “3 O’Clock Blues” went to number 1 on the R&B chart early in 1952. “You Know I Love You” did the same later that year, “Please Love Me” (1953) and “You Upset Me Baby” (1954) went to number 1 as well, and “Sweet Sixteen” reached number 2 in 1960.

The hits didn’t mean he stayed home. In 1956 he played around 340 one-nighters.

Live at the Regal 1964

He signed with ABC in 1962. Two years later he recorded Live at the Regal, and it came out in 1965. It’s one of four King recordings in the Grammy Hall of Fame.

The Fillmore 1968

In 1968, when B.B. walked out at the Fillmore in San Francisco, they stood and applauded before he’d played a note, by his own account. He later called it his breakthrough.

The Thrill Is Gone 1969

A year later came “The Thrill Is Gone”. It went to number 3 on the R&B chart and number 15 on the pop chart, and it won him his first Grammy, Best R&B Vocal Performance, Male.

He also opened 18 US concerts for the Rolling Stones around this time. The Clinton Library and the Songwriters Hall of Fame say 1969; PBS says 1970.

Rattle and Hum and Beale Street 1988 to 1991

In 1988, according to PBS, he recorded with U2 for Rattle and Hum and went on tour with them. That’s the band The Edge, Who’s Who number 7 plays guitar in.

In 1991 B.B. King’s Blues Club opened on Beale Street in Memphis, the street that gave him his name.

Riding with the King 2000

In 2000 he made Riding with the King with Eric Clapton, Who’s Who number 3. It won the Grammy for Best Traditional Blues Album, and PBS reports it went double platinum.

There’s a place for singing the blues.

The museum and the last years 2008 to 2015

The B.B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center opened in Indianola in 2008, in the town where he’d once driven a tractor.

He died at home in Las Vegas on 14 May 2015. He was 89. The Clark County coroner found he died of natural causes. His funeral was held on 30 May at Bell Grove Missionary Baptist Church in Indianola, and he was buried in the museum grounds.

Craft, sound and style

He called his guitars Lucille. The first was a Gibson L-30, and most of the later ones were Gibson ES-355s. In 1980 Gibson brought out a signature model for him, based on the ES-355 and later named the B.B. King Lucille.

His own view of the music was simple. He saw the blues as ordinary people telling stories, and he didn’t accept that it was “the Devil’s music”. The way he put it in 2004: “There’s a place for singing the blues.”

Stories people still tell

1. Lucille and the fire.

   In the winter of 1949 he was playing a dance hall in Twist, Arkansas. A fight broke out over a woman named Lucille, and a fire started. He got out, then went back in for his guitar. “So I almost lost my life trying to save the guitar,” he said later. He named it Lucille to remind himself never to do anything that dangerous again. (Accounts vary on the details, including whether anyone died.)

2. Blues Boy.

   “B.B.” isn’t a pair of initials his mother gave him. It’s what was left of “Beale Street Blues Boy”, his name on Memphis radio.

3. Not Albert’s brother.

   Albert King, Who’s Who number 1 was billed for years as B.B.’s half-brother. B.B. called him a friend. They weren’t related.

Legacy

The honours list is long. Fifteen Grammys, eight of them in the Blues field, which is more than anyone else has won there. A Lifetime Achievement Grammy and a place in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, both in 1987, with Sting doing the induction. The National Medal of Arts in 1990, Kennedy Center Honors in 1995, and in December 2006 the Presidential Medal of Freedom, presented by George W. Bush. When he died, he was number 6 on Rolling Stone’s list of the 100 greatest guitarists.

He’s buried in Indianola, beside the museum that carries his name. In September 2025, Memphis and Indianola marked what would have been his hundredth birthday.