09/16/2026
Today, we remember the birthday of the late, great Riley B. King! (B.B. King!)
Riley B. King
September 16, 1925 – May 14, 2015
“As a little kid, blues meant hope, excitement, pure emotion. Blues were about feelings. They seem to bring out the feelings of the artist and they brought out my feelings as a kid. They made me wanna move, or sing, or pick up Reverend's guitar and figure out how to make those wonderful sounds.” - B.B. King
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“If you want to be a good blues singer,” Bukka told B.B., “people are going to be down on you, so dress like you’re going to the bank to borrow money.” That’s exactly what the King of the Blues has done for the rest of his life.”
“He was also deeply influenced by the use of his cousin’s slide guitar technique — using a bottleneck piece of steel, slide up and down on the strings. B.B. discovered he wasn’t very good at the side, but he could bend the strings to make a similar sound, so that’s what he did. Today, his string bends are some of the most famous and instantly identifiable guitar riffs in the world - American Blues Scene
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“I wasn't taught to hate white people. That dead body hanging from the platform broke the heart and wounded the spirit of every black man and woman who passed by. But I suspected that it also hurt right-thinking white people. Both parents had spoken well of fair-minded white people - my namesake, Jim O'Reilly, and Flake Cartledge - so I knew better than to blame a whole race for the rotten deeds of a few. When some blacks talked about whites as devils, I could see the source of their wrath. I could still see the dead man outside the courthouse on the square. But I couldn't turn the fury into hatred. Blind hatred, my mother had taught me, poisons the soul. I kept hearing her say, 'If you're kind to people, they'll be kind to you.” - B.B. King
🎶
