Riding with the King: B.B. King

A 1999 Blues Access Profile

Last night I finally watched "Sinners," the Ryan Coogler black blues horror movie starring the versatile Michael B. Jordan as twins who return home to 1932 Clarksdale, Mississippi to open a juke joint after some furtive years in Chicago. I enjoyed it, but the transition from compelling back story to vampire flick left me a little baffled. Since childhood I loved horror movies, but I've become saturated. I guess since I stopped drinking refined moonshine 15 years ago, I also stopped drinking . . . blood.

But it reminded me how I ended my hiatus from music writing, from 1994 to 1999. I had been writing about food and . . . wine, first for Newsday, then freelancing for the Sunday New York Daily News ("Thoughts on Food"), and the (Newark) Star-Ledger ("In Season"). In the last years of 20th century newsstands, there was a great one in Frederick's, a luncheonette in my town on the North Shore of Long Island. A well-written and edited magazine called Blues Access showed up at Frederick's. Taking it home and checking the masthead, I saw it was based in Boulder, Colorado, and that Leland Rucker, a buddy from my college days, was an editor. I sent him an email (we had PCs then; I might have been using an eMac with a speed of about 2,400 bauds).

Leland made me an offer I couldn't refuse: Write the oldies reissues album reviews pages. This was a time when record labels large and small were bringing classic blues albums to CD, or collecting them in box sets. The Okeh Rhythm & Blues Story; The Cobra Records Story; and dozens more. Who would say no? I was back in the music game. I also did occasional features, which is how I spent an hour with B.B. King, whose guitar, Lucille, may have been the most famous totemic symbol in the blues-aware world. The Mississippi-born King died at 89 in Las Vegas, in 2015. In this 1999 feature story for Blues Access, he was already thinking about slowing down due to age and health issues, but was taking good care of himself and, after exploitation in his younger years, enjoying making plenty of money.

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The Blue Note may be the most upscale of expensive jazz and blues clubs in New York and a major stop on the itinerary of world-renowned musicians and the prosperous tourists who adore them. On a cold January night in the restless city, at the opening of a six-day run, there were longhairs in immaculate T-shirts and well-pressed jeans speaking French, tie-wearing young Japanese carrying what appeared to be palm-sized digital video cameras, even a few native New Yorkers for whom the thrill of seeing B.B. King has never gone.

From his chair on the small stage in the sub-compact room, the 73-year-old B.B. King could look out at the well-heeled United Nations of blues fans and think, without contradiction: "Lucille, I don’t think we’re in Indianola anymore."

The back-breaking sharecropping of his Mississippi youth must seem a few lifetimes ago. He has performed in 88 countries. B.B. King has wealth; he has respect. He also has hypertension and diabetes, and with that comes the reminder that he does not have the resilience in his legs that he once did.

He now sits, rather than stands, onstage. And speaking the next morning in an MCA Records conference room, B.B. King considers that maybe it’s time to slow down his relentless pace of performing.

"I’m getting older now, so I’m cutting down a bit," B.B. says. "I’m getting to the place where I just can’t handle it like I used to, physically."

Of course, everything is relative. For a powerful man like King, cutting back means trimming down from the nearly 300 dates he usually performs to the 225 he played in 1998.

He’s also trimmed down physically, dropping 40 pounds from his robust frame. "I don’t eat sweets, no sugar," he says. "I don’t smoke, haven’t since I was 25, and don’t drink: I had a small bit of cognac for Christmas, hardly a thimble-full. I’ve hardly had a drink of any kind for five or six years or more. I’m also a vegetarian, so I don’t have any real bad problems." With a shrug and a smile, he adds: "I don’t do everything I should do — it wouldn’t be no fun to live!"

The music, as always, retains its warmth, that seemingly contradictory blend of intimacy and majesty that has helped King transcend categories and cultures. At the Blue Note in New York, he sat on the crowded stage just steps above and feet away from the nearest patrons. He crafts his stage patter and set selection to suit the size and nature of the audiences that come to see him.

"I think one of the things that has prolonged my longevity is that I try to adjust to the club, not have the club adjust to us," he says. "The Blue Note is known all over the world and is very prestigious, so yeah, I go in there, I play the blues, and I be B.B. King. But I try not to do things that would be out of context with the club. What I would do at B.B. King’s club on Beale Street I would not do at the Blue Note; and when I leave here and go to the Blue Note in Osaka or Tokyo, I would not do the same as I do at the Blue Note here."

One notable aspect of King’s shows these days is the prominence of his horn section, built around the presence of bandleader and trumpet player James Bolden. Although King is among the most revolutionary and influential blues guitarists ever, he was influenced by Louis Jordan, among others, and has shared the spotlight with horn players since his earliest recordings.

"My very first recordings [in 1949] were for a company out of Nashville called Bullet, the Bullet Record Transcription company," King recalls. "I had horns that very first session. I had Phineas Newborn Jr., on piano; his father [Phineas Newborn] played drums, and his brother, Calvin, played guitar with me. I had Tuff Green on bass, Ben Branch on tenor sax, his brother, Thomas Branch, on trumpet, and a lady trombone player."

King’s infatuation with brass goes back even farther. "I’m kind of from the big-band era,’’ he says. "I was crazy about Benny Goodman, I liked Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Jimmy Lunceford and all the big bands that had blues singers with them. Jay McShann had Walter Brown as a singer, Count Basie had Jimmy Rushing, Duke had Al Hibbler, Benny Goodman had Peggy Lee. All those were my favorites. I loved the sound of horns and all of that. I always wanted it, and I always had one or two horns, always."

His innovative musicianship, congenial personality, and international appeal have made B.B. King the Louis Armstrong of his blues generation. Of his travels through 88 countries, he recalls as most memorable a 1979 tour through a Soviet Union still in the insular grip of a hard-line Communist regime.

"It seemed that everybody was shy of somebody else," King recalls. "When we got to Moscow, there was this great big hotel, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a hotel that large. And they had what we called ‘den mothers’ watching you on every floor, to keep you from having anybody come up . . . You definitely couldn’t bring no lady up, but they didn’t even want you to bring a man.

"I remember being in one of the rooms, and one of the guys in the band says to me, ‘Hey man, I sure would like a cup of coffee.’ And a few minutes later, someone knocked on the door and said, ‘Here’s your coffee.’ We went through things like that."

A little more than two years ago, King and band made their first trip to China, opening what was the world’s largest Hard Rock Cafe. But King found himself thrust into controversy having to do with the appearance (or lack thereof) by a local Chinese guitar hero.

"The promoters didn’t invite him, and then they laid it on me," King says. "The media said that B.B King did well, but he ignored the number-one guitarist of China. I said, ‘My God — I didn’t have anything to do with it.’ But it was interesting. The club held about 6,000 or 7,000 people inside, and there must have been about 18,000 more outside."

Of course, surviving in the music business can mean a lifetime of absorbing misunderstandings with promoters, record companies, lawyers, and the rest of the functionaries of "the business."

On his latest MCA album, Blues on the Bayou, King is credited as the sole producer because that’s what he was. In the 1950s he also produced many of his own sessions but never got credit.

"The company I was with knew a lot of things they didn’t tell me, that I didn’t learn about until later," King says. "I don’t give them a hard time, like some of the guys, who say, ‘They cheated me!’ I think that as long as you do business, if you don’t know, they’re not going to tell you."

But King rightfully remains sore about the poaching of half of his music publishing and songwriting royalties during the ’50s when he recorded for Joe, Jules and Saul Bihari’s RPM, Modern and Kent labels. Look at the writing credits of early King tunes such as "Sweet Little Angel," "Three O’Clock Blues," and "Ten Long Years," and you’ll see King listed as co-author with names such as Joe Josea, Jules Taub and Sam Ling.

"Some of the songs I wrote, they added a name when I copyrighted it," King says today. "Like ‘King and Ling’ or ‘King and Josea.’ There was no such thing as Ling, or Josea. No such thing. That way, the company could claim half of your song."

King owes his good and substantial fortune to having teamed up 35 years ago with Sidney A. Seidenberg, his long-time manager. Seidenberg was a certified public accountant who fought (sometimes successfully, sometimes not) to wrest song credit back from bogus "collaborators."

The durability of the King and Seidenberg relationship is unusual in an industry as fickle as the entertainment business. "We’re the same age," B.B. says. "He’ll be 74 in March; I’ll be 74 in September. We have some of the same symptoms, problems with the knees and legs. When we first got together 35 years ago, he told me if I said, ‘Sid, give me a dollar,’ he would. But if I said, ‘Sid, loan me a dollar,’ he’d expect me to pay it back. I’m the same way. We’re the best of friends, and there’s no manager better."

Their collaboration continues in Las Vegas, where Seidenberg lives and where King, as he likes to joke, pays rent. "I’ve been there for 23 years. I say I pay rent there," King says of Vegas. "I live on the bus, planes and trains."

Despite age and ailments, King has no plans to settle down around a swimming pool in the desert. "In order to keep a band together, and I think I’ve got a very good one, I’ve got to keep work for them," he says. "Keeping them working means I have to work, too."

King recognizes that he doesn’t have to work if he doesn’t want to. "Sid made some good investments for me years ago that have done real well,’’ he says. "I’m not rich, but I don’t have to do it. Usually, what Sid will do is have a lot of [tentative] dates and say, ‘B, we’ve got this set, and next month we can go here, or go there. How much do you think you can do? Can you handle this, can you handle that?’

"But I love to play. I enjoy it. And while I used to not care about money at all, today, I love it! I love it! (laughs). So when he tells me, the last time we got 50 cents from this one, this time we get a dollar, I say, ‘Yeah, let’s get that!’ It’s like dangling a carrot in front of Bugs Bunny."

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