An Interview With B. B. King In Between The Blues

SUN: We know that you were born in Mississippi - but you came up in Memphis?

BB: No. When I came to Memphis I was a young man. About 18.

SUN: Bobby Bland told us when we interviewed him recently that the Memphis scene was a particularly active one....

BB: Yeah, when I first came to Memphis and first met Bobby he was a real youngster - Bobby's much younger than I - and I was kind of like you might say one of the grown-up boys in the neighborhood.

SUN: He worked as your valet?

BB: Well, people say that, but nc. He was just around me and would hang out and I think enjoyed being around me because kind of, I believe, he liked me.

SUN: He continues to have nothing but respect for you.

BB: I think that's a mutual feeling. To me, he's one of the great artists of our time, so naturally I enjoy working with him. In fact I think he's a gigantic singer.

SUN: When you started playing, working, with him, did you sing at that time? Were you a singer first?

BB: Yes, I was a singer first. See, with black people, when I first started, my singing was what was important - then came guitar. But later on, after I made "3 O' Clock Blues," I was playing a Fender guitar and then started playing a Lucille type. And then it started to be a thing - they'd say, "where's that git-fiddle at?" I'd hear that quite often. They started asking for it. Then, after that, with black people the guitar was just as important as the singing. Then, starting about '67, the last of '66, that's when my guitar started to catch on more with the white's than it had been with the blacks. It started to get popular then. Not the singing, but the guitar.

SUN: The way you play guitar has influenced just about everybody who plays rock and roll.

BB: I've heard people say that, but I didn't pay attention to it until I was reading where Ralph Gleason had mentioned that he'd be going to the Fillmore West where a few of the young guitars had been coming in there and he said nearly everybody was playing something that I had played or something similar to what I was playing. That's when I really started to pay attention. That's when I started to listen to Eric Clapton, Elvin Bishop, Mike Bloomfield, you name them....

SUN: Who were some of your own influences?

BB: Blind Lemon Jefferson is one - a blues singer and guitarist. Robert Johnson is another, a blues singer and guitarist. But I think of myself more like Johnson than Blind Lemon, because actually Johnson filled up that gap between jazz and blues, soul and blues, spiritual and blues. He was right in there, and I kind of like to think that's where we are - right in between. Because we have to border, in a lot of cases, we have to border jazz or border rock or even spirituals to get our music played on the radio.

SUN: You mentioned Louis Jordan as an influence. Was T-Bone Walker?

BB: Yes, T-Bone was, certainly. In fact, you name them, and they were. Anyone you can name that was popular at that time was an influence on me, and it didn't have anything to do with what instrument they played or what they did. Jordan, I was as crazy about his singing as his playing, and then, to me, he was the greatest showman that I saw. I'd never seen anybody that had personality on the stage like Jordan. I knew Louis Armstrong, but to me he - if I try to describe Louis Armstrong I would describe him as the boy on the block who made good and came back and still remembered his friends. That's the way he was. Now Duke Ellington I knew very well and respected but it was altogether different. Same thing with Nat Cole - it was altogether different. I was afraid of Nat and afraid of Duke. It was like sitting around the King of England.
Last time I saw Nat was at Sugar Ray's Barber Shop before he died. We talked, and he was nice as nice could be. But I was always just a little bit uncomfortable. With Louis Armstrong I was not - Count Basie I'm not. We can get together.... That about sums it up: T-Bone Walker, Elmore James, Little Milton, Roy Brown, Big Joe Turner, Jimmy Witherspoon, all the guys that was in the blues, the real blues, upset me and still do. If you could go to my room now I've just mentioned. Still I keep them with me most of the time.

SUN: What's been your experience with the recording business?

BB: We started recording in 1949 with Kent - actually that was a company out of Nashville. The label that I'm with now, which is ABC, I've been with them since about 1960, so that's about 16 years. Well, what had happened - what made me go with them, I liked the company I was with (Kent) but they had gone into the "rack job" business, they called it - that is, cheap albums. Some of the albums were sold for99 cents. This is OK - I wasn't thinking about the money there. But I was thinking about the exposure for B.B.King - the quality of the albums wasn't the best as far as I was concerned. And they weren't recognized in the music trades and magazines, and you need all the help that you can get from the trades, the critics and everybody else, you know. Favorable or not, at least your name needs to be mentioned. And of course they almost stopped making 45's - nothing albums. So your jukeboxes are not playing LP's unless they are made for the jukebox only
So that's the reason I left Kent at that time, because it was a small independent company - they sold 100,000 copies of a record it was a big hit for them. But 100,000 copies with ABC is just a normal release - we have to sell at least 500,00 to think that we are doing pretty good. So this is one of the reasons I went to ABC. ABC is recognized, they have one of the biggest world wide distribution set-ups, but the other company was small and it took longer.
One of the other things about the small company was the intimate type of affair, you might say. Because I knew the boss, I could walk into the boss's office anytime. I wanted to and say hello. The boss at ABC had a guard at the door. That was the difference. But they pay, they don't just promise. Whatever they promise, they pay, I should say. And that's it. It's a business thing with them; it's a bit different with the other companies.

SUN: Do you think the blues has become a lot more popular in the last few years?

BB:  Yes, it's more popular now than it ever has been. But we are still getting the short end of the stick. It's still not played on the radio like other types of music, it's not on television like other types of music generally are. But we have a feeling that it's due to the fact that it's not being exposed properly, and we're really hoping we can get a television blues show that will featured on other folks' shows - like most of the rock TV shows around, I've been on them. But most of my colleagues, haven't. We'd like to get that going as soon as we can.

SUN: You have a birthday coming up soon....

BB: That's right - September 16. If I live I'll be 51 years old.