Randy Lewis: B.B. King's Life Examined
The tour bus where B.B. King is sitting has parked right outside the artists' entrance at Gibson Amphitheatre in Universal City so the walk to the stage will be short and painless.
The venerated guitarist, singer and songwriter is balancing his lifelong yearning to get onstage against offstage life with diabetes. The illness has given him a latter-day second career as a spokesman for a glucose monitoring device, and he mentions those ads for comic relief once he's in front of an audience again.
But the truth of his condition is that, at age 80, walking and even standing now require serious effort, the reason he spends as much time as possible off his feet.
...
Before he was a bluesman, he was a country boy named Riley B. King on a Mississippi plantation. He earned 35 cents per 100 pounds of cotton he picked, and he could pull close to 500 pounds a day. Later, he learned to drive a tractor and upped his pay to $22.50 a week. Tractor drivers got a lot more attention from girls than cotton pickers did, but he quickly learned that musicians got even more. That's not the only reason he chose music, but it's not inconsequential either.
"I think woman is God's greatest creation," says King, who has been married and divorced twice, with no children. "I think we're No. 2, but she's No. 1. Not that I want to sleep with every woman I meet, but I admire them all."
That admiration colors his assessment of the vernacular of today's music, especially rap. "I don't kick rap," he says, "as long as they use clean lyrics. But when they start talking about what they could do to women, then I get mad."
Over his long career, King has made excursions into rock, R&B, even disco, but he's always stayed rooted in the blues, and been a bit disappointed that so few young black musicians seem interested in the sound he loves. (Recently he's toured with Kenny Wayne Shepherd and Joe Bonamassa, two next-generation white blues players.)
There are Beatles detractors, U2 skeptics. But you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone with a negative word to say about B.B. King or his music. "B.B. King taps into something universal," says Eric Clapton. "He can't be confined to any one genre. That's why I've called him a 'global musician.' "
Nor is there much debate that he's among the kindest souls in the music world.
[Editor's Note: The original piece is much longer. Please see the LA Times for more.]
The venerated guitarist, singer and songwriter is balancing his lifelong yearning to get onstage against offstage life with diabetes. The illness has given him a latter-day second career as a spokesman for a glucose monitoring device, and he mentions those ads for comic relief once he's in front of an audience again.
But the truth of his condition is that, at age 80, walking and even standing now require serious effort, the reason he spends as much time as possible off his feet.
...
Before he was a bluesman, he was a country boy named Riley B. King on a Mississippi plantation. He earned 35 cents per 100 pounds of cotton he picked, and he could pull close to 500 pounds a day. Later, he learned to drive a tractor and upped his pay to $22.50 a week. Tractor drivers got a lot more attention from girls than cotton pickers did, but he quickly learned that musicians got even more. That's not the only reason he chose music, but it's not inconsequential either.
"I think woman is God's greatest creation," says King, who has been married and divorced twice, with no children. "I think we're No. 2, but she's No. 1. Not that I want to sleep with every woman I meet, but I admire them all."
That admiration colors his assessment of the vernacular of today's music, especially rap. "I don't kick rap," he says, "as long as they use clean lyrics. But when they start talking about what they could do to women, then I get mad."
Over his long career, King has made excursions into rock, R&B, even disco, but he's always stayed rooted in the blues, and been a bit disappointed that so few young black musicians seem interested in the sound he loves. (Recently he's toured with Kenny Wayne Shepherd and Joe Bonamassa, two next-generation white blues players.)
There are Beatles detractors, U2 skeptics. But you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone with a negative word to say about B.B. King or his music. "B.B. King taps into something universal," says Eric Clapton. "He can't be confined to any one genre. That's why I've called him a 'global musician.' "
Nor is there much debate that he's among the kindest souls in the music world.
[Editor's Note: The original piece is much longer. Please see the LA Times for more.]