Look at the marquee bearing B.B. King's name, honoring the man many call the greatest blues guitarist who ever lived. Riley B. King was born in a Mississippi sharecropper's shack in 1925 and arrived in Memphis as a young man with a guitar, a dream, and very little else. He got his break on Beale Street, performing on street corners for tips before landing a radio spot on WDIA — the first radio station in America programmed entirely by and for Black audiences.
He called his guitar Lucille after a woman at the center of a bar fight that nearly killed him. His vibrato, his bends, his ability to make a single note ache with feeling — these became the DNA of electric blues and rock guitar alike. Eric Clapton, Carlos Santana, and Jimi Hendrix all named him as their primary influence.
B.B. King died in 2015 at age 89, still performing well into his eighties. This club keeps his name and his spirit right here on the street that made him who he was.