A giant of the blues and R&B and a titanic figure in popular music over the last half-century, Riley B. King, was born in 1925 in Indianola, Mississippi, USA. From singing in amateur gospel groups as a child, he was playing blues guitar and singing on street corners by the time he was 16. In Memphis his career prospered and by 1952 he was a national figure, having held the number 1 spot in the Billboard R&B chart for 15 weeks with "Three O'Clock Blues".
His playing style is instantly recognisable, his finger vibrato, his own substitute for the slide, which he had never managed to master results in a fluid guitar sound, in which almost every note is bent and/or sustained. This, together with King's penchant for playing off the beat, gives his solos the pattern of speech, and the personification of his beautiful black, gold plated, pearl inlaid Gibson guitar as 'Lucille' seems highly appropriate.
Robert Crumb's collectable set of cards entitled 'Heroes of the Blues' doesn't include BB King, but that ommission is truly put right with his portrait of BB and 'Lucille'