B.B.KING - THE BEALE STREET BLUES BOY REMEMBERS HIS EARLY DAYS: an Interview with Julian Piper

‘Memphis is a town of Donut shops and Churches, whatever musical achievements it achieves, are achievements in spite of the city - not because of it…..’ Robert Gordon

‘I don’t think it’s because of ladies that I play Blues because I was playin’ them before I got married!’ B.B.King

‘Man - we used to throw those dice at the turn of the row, had to be right outa sight so the bossman couldn’t see us!’

The acknowledged King of the Blues breaks up in laughter as Bee Bop, his long standing tour manager of fifty years, leans forward and proffers me his right hand. I go to shake it and a pair of brightly coloured red and white plastic dice roll as if by magic into my palm. B.B. started out playing blackjack when he was driving his tractor in the Mississippi cotton fields, and it’s too late for him to become a Baptist Preacher now.

It’s Bournemouth on a Sunday night and hard as it is to believe, the long reigning Chairman of the Blues Board, is half way through his last tour of the U.K. Outside the sun’s setting and off the old wooden pier a group of hardened surfers are hanging on the breaks. Spume lies in misty fronds beneath the cliffs but it’s unseasonably cold; a fact not lost on B.B.

‘You white people can stand more cold than us - it’s fact - and when you’re from down South like I am, it’s even worse. People that is coloured can’t take cold except my drummer Caleb who always takes off his coat wherever he is,’ B.B. chuckles. ‘ I always call him white - he just can’t take the heat.

During my early years I never played New York in the winter,’ B.B. said.

‘I specifically told my agent never to book me there. Eventually I lived there and got used to it but thank heavens now I live in Las Vegas where it’s hot; people say ‘’Oh my lawwwwd…it’s burnin’ up !’’ But I love it.’ He guffawed.

Sitting in an armchair smiling rather like an avuncular Uncle, the first thing that strikes you is that B.B.’s a lot smaller in the flesh than he appears onstage. But despite the rigours of decades of relentless touring he’s in good shape; he has a few minor physical problems with his knees but for a man who’s eighty years old, he appears to be in rude good health – and obviously happy.

Nowadays after all the myriad twists and turns of a career spanning more than half a century, the name B.B. King is as indelibly linked to Memphis as Elvis Presley or Sun Records. The early tracks that he cut in Sam Phillips Sun Studio’s helped define just about everything that’s happened in Rock n’ Roll ever since. And as we all know B.B.’s always been out there, playing in excess of over two hundred gigs annually.

But it’s those early Memphis days that are understandably the era of his life that B.B. holds in great affection, and given the opportunity to talk to Guitarist, he seemed genuinely pleased to reminisce.

‘When I first came to Memphis from Mississippi, the very first place I wanted to go was Beale Street - I’d heard so very much about it. For me the place was like a college of learning, just about everything went on there !’ He laughs. ‘Maybe there was some guy playing guitar on a stool, another preachin’ a little further down, another shooting craps. Every kind of music, I got the chance to see Muddy Waters, Sonny Boy Williamson and all the big bands like Duke Ellington or Count Basie.’

Memphis was the largest city for two hundred miles in any direction and because it had electricity, probably also the loudest. B.B. smiles as he remembers. ‘It’s true because we never had electricity where I lived out in the country until I was sixteen,’ he admits.

‘A lot of us from the Delta met up in Memphis and this was all prior to John Lee Hooker going to Detroit, prior to Jimmy Reed and Muddy Waters going to Chicago. That’s what I prefer to think the electricity in the city really was, together we were like a waterfall generating our own electricity !’

B.B. got his first real break taking part in a Beale Street talent show organised by Rufus Thomas, and along with Jnr Parker, pianist Roscoe Gordon and Johnny Ace, he became part of a Beale Street musical mafia. And if the work on Beale dried up, then there was always West Memphis on the Arkansas side of the river.

‘When I came to Memphis segregation was very bad but musicians are like man and woman - they always find a way to get together. Things were far better in West Memphis, they even had gambling there which they still don’t allow in Memphis,’ B.B. sighs ruefully ‘ People were a little more liberal - it was an ‘open’ town where you could buy liquor on every corner if you wanted it, shoot craps and gamble; back in Memphis they wouldn’t even let you play Bingo !

The town gave a great start to many people - Roscoe Gordon, Little Milton - because although you’d find work in Memphis on a Saturday or Sunday, during the rest of the week there was an eleven o’clock curfew. You stay there after twelve and you’d be in trouble with the police - but West Memphis was open 24 hours a day - a musician’s heaven !’

B.B.’s first records were made in 1949 for the small Nashville based Bullet label, but it wasn’t until 1951 when he recorded 3 O’clock Blues that he found himself with a hit on his hands

B.B. had already recorded eleven tracks with Sam Phillips at his fledgling Sun studio’s, but ironically success arrived with this rough and ready track cut in a local YMCA on a portable Magnacord tape deck. With a newfound local fame he soon joined the Memphis based band of Bill Harvey, something which as B.B. recalls with amusement, was very much a marriage of convenience.

‘Bill Harvey had a couple of guitarists with him and he wouldn’t have had me if I hadn’t have had hit records,’ He chuckles. ‘Ain’t no way in the world he would have had me because I wasn’t really much of a guitarist, but I ‘d made 3 O’clock Blues so I was with him as a lead player, and as someone with a bit of a name.’

Surprisingly at this early stage in his career, B.B. played very little guitar on any of his recordings.

‘As a rhythm player I was no good to him either!’ B.B. readily admits, ‘yet he was one of the best band leaders that I ever met - and one of the worst.’ He laughs.

‘I’d be sitting up talking to a girl and he’d come up, ‘’ You sittin’ up jiving this girl ? You ought to be upstairs practising your damn guitar because you ain’t playin’ nuthin’ ! He used to make me so angry doin’ that.’ B.B. guffaws again.

‘Bill Harvey had a show band situation, I’d sing the blues then someone would come up and sing some pop songs. Back then if you had someone that was good enough to sing white people’s songs - the kind of songs on the screen you heard sung by Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra - then white people who had house parties would have someone like Harvey’s band who would put on a little show. Those people always wanted to be entertained and I think that rubbed off on me; I love to give the people a show and although I’m a blues singer, I like an audience to be part of what I’m doing.

Back then most of the best bands worked that way,’ He recalls. ‘ Tommy Dorsey had Frank Sinatra, Count Basie had Jimmy Rushing and Joe Williams; all of these people knew they had to put on a show. Males don’t want to see guys up there, they want to see women but - women want to see those handsome hunks up there too !’

In Martin Scorses 2002 documentary ‘Road to Memphis’, B.B. returns home for the annual W.C.Handy Awards ceremony, the blues world’s equivalent of the Oscars.

It’s a poignant film which takes time out away from the bright lights to also focus on bluesman Bobby Rush. Still relentlessly plying the black ‘chitlin’ circuit with his band in a beat up bus, it’s the very same world that B. B. King once spent years touring; small gigs for small money often separated by gruelling distances.

For Bobby Rush the road to success inevitably requires ‘crossing over’ to a white audience, but as B.B points out, for a bluesman a helping hand is always useful.

‘ Lonnie Johnson was always one of my favourite guitarists - I think he was probably playing even before Robert Johnson.’ B.B. remembers. ‘ He made some quite famous albums with jazzman Eddie Lang but I always like to think Eddie Lang played with him !

What Eddie Lang did back then for Lonnie Johnson was exactly the same thing that U2 and the Rolling Stones did for me; Lang was very famous but no one really knew Lonnie Johnson’s name.

U2 froze my picture on their Rattle and Hum film for 8 or 10 seconds - nothing else but old B.B.King’s picture.’ He laughs. ‘Now that was a great thing for me and I didn’t ask them to do it - they just did it. That introduced me to a whole new audience. ‘

B.B.’s first gig for a predominantly white audience was in 1968 at San Francisco’s Fillmore West, but for many years to come he remained largely unknown. The painful struggle for recognition remains clearly etched in B.B.’s memory.

‘The same thing happened when I opened up for the Rolling Stones on tour; when I supported them at Atlantic City I’d never seen that many people in my life all at one time ! We also played in Baltimore Maryland and this white lady with teenage children came up after I’d finished.’ B.B. recalls. ‘She came backstage and wanted to know if I’d made records; now by that time I’m sure I’d made at least 30 ! I told her ‘yes’’- I had made a few but wasn’t facetious or anything. She said ‘ My children love you but I have never heard of you. She said ‘I’m going to look for some and buy them.’’

Looking back, did B.B. feel that he’d been lucky ?

‘Not really,’ was his surprising answer. ‘ I guess I see Memphis probably like most people see their old college, their Alma Mater. I miss a lot of the people I don’t see anymore but it was a place of learning, a place that I claimed as my home and I’m always glad to get back there even if things aren’t as they once were.

If I have had some luck, I like to remember when I spent a short time in the army; it’s something that I learned there. The sergeant would say ‘’If you’re standing next to a buddy and get shot and killed - be sorry - but be glad it wasn’t you’’. It’s the same kind of thing and that’s the way I see life today; I miss my friends but I’m glad to be here still.’

BEAL STREET BLUES

Take a stroll down Beale nowadays and you’ll still hear the sound of the Blues hanging in the air, but it won’t be the down home Delta Blues that B.B. King grew up with. Instead it’s the audience pleasing sassy strut of horn based bands pumping out ‘Mustang Sally’ or ‘Ain’t No Sunshine’. Predictably B.B.’s own club is always jammed with excited gaggles of out of town tourists, whooping it up demanding that the band play ‘Sweet Home Chicago’ or ‘Thrill Is Gone’.

A few yards down the street Schwab’s dusty old department store will probably still be open - the place never seems to shut - one of the last vestiges of the original Beale street that defied the wrecking ball. Plastic replica’s of the Memphis pyramid jostle for space alongside Mojo roots and Crossing Incense, greasy old phials of Black Cat oil and dusty John The Conqueror charms. Walk on past the bright lights and if you’re lucky you might hear the raucous wail of a harmonica coming out of back alley.

An enterprising bar owner will have fed an electricity cable across the tables to a bunch of musicians who’ve driven up from Clarksdale Mississippi for the night. The guys play for tips and beer, a clutch of couples will be slowly dancing drinking from cardboard beakers of beer and out on the street the police shoot a sideways glance before walking on. Not much changes in these parts.

MEMPHIS OFFSHOOTS, ROCKABILLY REBELS and the $12,000000 mistake

Memphis has always been a town for renegades, it’s a place that eschewed the factory line discipline of its neighbour Nashville, and along the way created something that’s art rather than a disposable fleeting moment of musical popularity. Of course the ‘hits’ have always happened but even with world famous singers like Al Green and Elvis Presley, fame came about rather more by accident than design; a by product of creative energy that just happened to occur when the tape was rolling. No one knew that more than Sam Phillips at the Sun Studio’s at 706 Union Avenue. He once boasted ‘If I could find a young white singer that could sing and feel like a Negro, I’d make a million dollars…’’ In 1956 he sold Elvis Presley to RCA for $40,000 but as Sam also said ‘’If you’re going to make a mistake you might as well make a twelve million dollar one !’’

SCOTTY MOORE

The original Rockabilly hero: When Scotty strapped on his gold Gibson ES - 295 to pick behind a ‘snotty nosed kid decked out in pink shirt and slacks’ on that Monday afternoon July 6th 1954, he unwittingly not only made music history, but became a hero for everyone from Keith Richards to Jeff Beck.

Rarely has guitar been so innovative.

CARL PERKINS

The man who wrote Blues Suede Shoes and became Sam Phillips' main squeeze after Elvis left Sun. Like Scotty Moore, Perkins rootslay firmly in the blues and hillbilly music he heard growing up as a kid but seasoned with a hefty dose of Chuck Berry he came up with something that was totally original. Early photo’s show Carl playing a 52 - 53 gold - top Les Paul but he later moved onto Fender Telecasters and Stratocasters, before settling down with a Gibson ES - 5 Switch master.

PAUL BURLINSON

The original Rock n’ Roll Wildman, the Rock n’ Roll Trio - the band that Burlinson helped form with Johnny Burnette - were just about as Punk as things got back in 1956. Using an unorthodox technique that bordered on the maniacal, by accidentally loosening a valve in the back of his Fender amp, on seminal tracks like ‘Train Kept A - Rollin’ covered by the Yardbirds and Aerosmith, Burlinson has the distinction of being the first guitarist on the planet to intentionally employ distortion. Once he heard Burlinson, Jeff Beck never looked back.

B.B. KING’S GUITARS

Although he’ll forever be associated and best known for his long standing love affair with ‘Lucille’, his Gibson Custom Shop model derived from the E.S. 355, when it comes to guitars even B.B. wouldadmit to having had something of a fickle nature.

‘It was a bitch to try and get hold of a good guitar when I started out , ‘ He explained ‘And if you did get one, then you’d better hold on to it and not loan it out because often they didn’t come back. Back then other than the harmonica, there was no other instrument you could get easily…’

Early shots during his tenure at WDIA show B.B. posing with a black F hole Gibson arch top and matching Gibson amplifier.

Then there are the later infamous photographs of B.B. King wearing natty Bermuda shorts, taken in Memphis when he was with the Bill Harvey Band, playing a large blonde Gibson with three P90 pickups.

‘Hey - Don’t you DO that to me !’ B.B. exclaims at the sight of his knees. It’s a classic photo - to his left partially hidden by what appears to be a tweed Fender Twin, a fan stares adoringly up at him.

‘Man - I was just crazy about T - Bone Walker and had to have a guitar just like his, one with three pickups. The guitar I’m holding is what I believe they called the Gibson E.S. 400 and I was crazy about it too.’ B.B. laughed ‘Probably one I borrowed !’

BLONDE TELECASTER

‘ I had a Telecaster when they first came out, maybe about 1953. The word had it that Fender gave Wes Montgomery one, and that they’d also given his brother Monk Montgomery - who was one hell of a bass player - a guitar also. So I wanted them to give me one because I thought I was pretty good too ! But they wouldn’t, so I bought mine and they’ve haunted me with that photograph ever since.

I liked the Telecaster but I had to take the cup(bridge cover) off so that I could cup the strings like I wanted. It’s the same thing as you get with a piano using the damping pedals when you want to shut the sound off. My problem was that when I played this flat part of my hand would just get eaten up by the strings. My fingers used to bleed sometimes so I liked to get the strings close to the neck; I’ve never had calluses like some guys.

I also didn’t like the fact that there was no rod through the neck and after a while it started to bow.

I had a Les Paul - I got one now – I’ve always played Gibson when I could get one!’

THE SUN BLUESMEN

IKE TURNER

The man with the distinction of recording the first ever Rock n’ Roll record, Ike’s song ‘Rocket 88’ cut in Sun Studio’s in 1951, was arguably the most raucous train wreck of a recording ever made.

HOWLING WOLF

With a voice big enough to plug a hole in the levee, Mr Chester Burnette’s band featured Willie Johnson’s anarchic overdriven Gibson plugged through an amp that sounded like it was falling apart - which it probably was.

‘When I first heard Howling Wolf I said, ‘’ this is for me, this where the soul of man never dies. The greatest show you could see to this day would be to see Chester Burnette doing one of my sessions in the studio - buddy he sang with his soul; there was nothing on his damn mind but that song.’ Sam Phillips.

PAT HARE

Firmly in the Willie Johnson raw school of guitar, Pat Hare began his career with the ‘Wolf’ serenading the punters in a Memphis whorehouse, and famously recorded ‘Cotton Crop Blues’ with harp player James Cotton. Sam Phillips said. ‘ He had a Fender amp and a pretty good guitar, the pickup was powerful and I think he had a mismatch of impedance. It was a little more than the amp could stand - but it felt good !’