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A Mondavi Center Just Added Event
Sunday, November 4, 2012 • 7PM
Jackson Hall, Mondavi Center, UC Davis
20 | Mondavi Center Presents Program issue 3: nov 2012
b.b. kinG
B.B. King, since he started recording in the late 1940s, has released more than
60 albums many of them considered blues classics, like the definitive live
blues album Live At The Regal (1965) and collaboration with Bobby “Blue”
Bland, Together For The First Time (1976).
Over the years, King has had two number one R & B hits, “Three O’Clock
Blues” (1951) and “You Don’t Know Me” (1952) and four number two
R & B hits, “Please Love Me” (1953) and “You Upset Me Baby” (1954),
“Sweet Sixteen, Part I” (1960) and “Don’t Answer The Door, Part I” (1966).
King’s most popular crossover hit, “The Thrill Is Gone” (1970), went to
number 15 pop.
But King, as well as the entire blues genre, is not radio oriented. His classic
songs such as “Payin The Cost To Be the Boss,” “Caldonia,” “How Blue Can
You Get,” “Everyday I Have the Blues” and “Why I Sing the Blues” are concert
(and fan) staples.
King was born Riley B. King on September 16, 1925, on a cotton plantation
in Itta Bene, Mississippi, just outside the Mississippi Delta town of Indianola.
He used to play on the corner of Church and Second Street for dimes and
would sometimes play in as many as four towns on a Saturday night. With
his guitar and $2.50, he hitchhiked north to Memphis in 1947 to pursue his
musical career. Memphis was the city to which every important musician of
the South gravitated and which supported a large, competitive musical community,
where virtually every black musical style was heard. King stayed with
his cousin Bukka White, one of the most renowned rural blues performers of
his time, who schooled King further in the art of the blues.
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