Music: May 2015 Archives

King of the Blues, R.I.P. : The Other McCain

A tribute to the hard work and dues paid by B. B. King:

"Anyone enthralled by the popular misconception that a working musician's life is glamorous should contemplate what it was like for King and his band in the 1950s when, in addition to the ordinary hassles of life on the road, they also had to cope with the difficulties that Jim Crow-era segregation imposed. King's hard-earned status as the most commercially successful blues performer in history, however, required him to endure the ups and downs of a career affected by shifts in popular music tastes. In the early 1960s, he was actually booed in Baltimore by a young audience that was there to see the soul crooner Sam Cooke. King kept working -- playing more than 40 weeks on the road year after year -- until a new generation rediscovered the blues. British rockers like the Rolling Stones and the Yardbirds, who had traced rock-and-roll back to its R&B roots, inspired a blues revival in the late 1960s....

"King was 43 years old and had already played more than 4,000 gigs before his "commercial breakthrough" in 1968."

My wife and I had the thrill of seeing him in concert at the PAC, with seventh-row seats, playing songs and telling stories.