B.B. King

Riley B. King was the most commercially successful and widely recognized blues musician of the postwar era, a tireless ambassador for the music who performed over 15,000 concerts in a career spanning six decades. Born on a cotton plantation in the Mississippi Delta, he moved to Memphis in 1948 and became a disc jockey on WDIA radio, where he earned the nickname 'Beale Street Blues Boy,' later shortened to B.B. His vibrato-laden guitar style, built on T-Bone Walker's single-string approach but given a stinging, vocal quality through his use of the Gibson ES-355 he called 'Lucille,' became the most imitated sound in modern blues. His 1969 hit 'The Thrill Is Gone' crossed over to the pop charts and became his signature song. He won 15 Grammy Awards and was inducted into both the Rock and Roll and Blues Halls of Fame. He performed approximately 300 shows a year well into his seventies before his death in Las Vegas in 2015.