- He was an American blues singer,
song writer, and guitarist.
He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987.
He's considered one of the most
influential blues musicians of all time,
earning the nickname, the king of blues.
He's B.B. King and here are his top 10 rules for success.
(swoosh)
- What do you want to do with your music
and with your singing?
- Play the best that I can,
reach as many people as I can,
as many countries.
In other words,
I'd like the whole world to be able to hear
B.B. King sing and play the blues.
Well, practice is something that we think
is something that you should do daily anyway
'cuz I'm lazy and I don't,
but generally you kind of think, for example,
I know that at the North Sea Jazz Festival
people are used to hearing various types of music.
So, when I come out,
I try to do the best that I can do of my kind of music.
- B.B., do you still practice?
- Yes. Yes, I do.
Not nearly enough,
but I play every night, practically,
at least for five nights a week
and I practice,
but my practicing
is not what it should be.
In other words,
to really just get down and play the scales and something
once or twice a week.
But by me playing every night, usually,
I'm always running into something
or accidentally falling into something
that I hadn't heard before,
then you go back and look for it later on.
- When you do practice,
what do you work on?
Do you have any specific exercises?
- My exercises usually
it's the scales mostly.
(descending two octave scale)
Mostly that and just all over the neck of the guitar
because if I keep doing it,
I usually will hear
and you start to playing with them.
(melodic improv)
You keep hearing it
and you hear things that you can play with.
(melodic improv)
You know, something like that. - That's great.
- And that's what I keep doing
until my fingers stay stop.
- [Man] That feeling on the guitar,
that singing string.
What was the phrase that you used for it before?
- Twingy. - Twingy.
This is your own.
This is your contribution.
- I think so.
I think it is
because I've heard so many guys,
since I've started playing, sound that way,
and I don't remember ever hearing anybody before that.
Not before that.
We average about 200--
about 250 to 275 concerts per year
and sometimes that mean you might do two in one day.
I'm 69.
I'll be 70 on September the 16th if I live that long.
And I find the energy meeting people like yourselves.
I enjoy people.
I love to play.
See people happy.
I love to see them dance
and see them enjoy themselves.
That's energy for me
and it's educational.
I get a chance to learn how to say merci beaucoup.
(laughing)
I don't speak French,
but Lucille does.
Music is a universal language
and I believe that because
it's been many times I've heard great musicians
like Django Reinhardt.
I love.
You never hear him speak English,
but he speaks it with his guitar.
So, I think music is a universal language
that we can, I believe, communicate with anyone.
Well--
Yes. I believe I do.
I don't want to stick my neck out there,
but I think so.
But I'm grateful that some of them seem to like me.
I'm grateful because
to me, it seemed to open a few doors for us
that seemed like it was never going to be open
and we're glad when people
like Mike and the rest of the fellows
will take up some of the things we do.
We're very happy
because until the days of rock and roll,
a lot of times
a lot of the places,
they just wouldn't accept us.
I'm not speaking racially.
I'm just talking about he people as a whole
that just wouldn't accept us in some of the places
that the doors are open now,
that you can go into
because of people like Mike,
Elvis Presley, the Beatles, Fats Domino.
People like that helped us out quite a bit.
Well, I think, like this--
the management of Newport Club wouldn't want me
if they couldn't have people that wanted to see me.
So, I try my best to let the audience know
that I appreciate them
and their appearance here with me
or their support, if you will,
in letting them know that I love them too.
I've been around some artists,
I've been around some places, even.
Once, the audience--
I'll never forget once, I was in Chicago.
I won't mention the club.
I was in Chicago
and the management had been advertising
to get people to come.
So, people were there.
So, when the show was over,
some guy got up and said,
well, you don't have to go home,
but you got to leave here.
That made me angry.
I get very angry.
Very angry.
I said that he could say,
folks, we got to close.
You know?
That whole stuff about you don't have to go home
but you got to leave here.
He didn't say that when he was trying
to get them to come in.
So, I wasn't happy about that at all.
So, you don't get that here.
Sure. There are curfews in some places.
Some places you have to close at a particular time.
The audience understands that.
So, if you tell them,
you're going to have a few that may grumble,
but the majority of the people
are right with you and they're sensible.
They know that if you don't close down,
you maybe lose your license.
So, if you say, folks, sorry.
The time is now.
We have to cut it off.
It's our curfew time.
And majority of the people will walk out.
They will go.
- [Man] What is for you the characteristics
of a good melody?
- Something that seems to stay with you.
Sometimes you wake up mornings
and you go to wash your face
and you still hear there's something in your head.
You walk out
and all of a sudden you're whistling.
(whistling)
Something that stays with you.
That's a good melody.
That haunts you.
- [Man] Are you still getting better as a guitarist?
- I hope I am.
I hope so.
I can't always tell 'cuz I still can't play
like I want to play.
I'm going to do this 'til I die, folks.
(blues music)
There's a lot of young guitarists have new ways of playing
and they, to me, are what's going on today.
- Well, people want to see you.
- I'm glad.
(laughing)
Oh, am I glad.
(blues music)
So, I was going to Montgomery to play.
Called the promoter,
I said, I'm broke down.
I said, I don't know how long it's going to take to fix it.
It was about two thirty, three o'clock in the evening, then.
I said, I'm pretty sure that
we'll be late when we get there.
He said, that's all right, B.
Come on up.
Then, are you sure?
He said, yeah. Come on up. Come on up.
So, sure enough, we were late when the bus got ready
and we went on up there.
When we got there--
We had something you call--
You don't hear much about them today.
Armories.
Armories. You remember? - Yeah.
- We used to play a lot of those.
Armories.
So, the armory,
you started from the ground floor
and you had to walk about 10 or 15 stairs
and there was a platform like that.
So, that's where he was sat
to collect his tickets and the money.
And then, you go about 10 or 15 more floors
and there's the dance hall.
- Okay.
- So, when I got there I said,
we'll, we made it.
He's, yeah, but you can turn around and go back now
'cuz I ain't going to pay you.
I said, but I called you and told you.
He said, yeah, but I didn't think
you were going to be this late.
(laughing)
I said, but I didn't say how late.
I just told you we're going to be late.
He said, well. I ain't going to pay you,
so you can turn around and go back.
I said, well. Since I'm here,
I have a thing about being late.
I have a thing about standing up the people.
I said, let me go on out and play.
He said, okay. You can go up if you want to,
but I ain't going to pay you.
I said, okay.
So, we went on upstairs
and boy, when we got on the dance floor
and people just looked like they were packed in there.
I sure would have liked to have had some of that money.
(laughing)
So, we got up there
and we started to playing
and the people, you know,
you couldn't buy liquor,
but you could carry
what they call a brown bag.
- Yeah.
- You could carry your bottle with you.
Well, at the armory,
they had places where you could keep your bottle, you know?
Well, we got to playing
and people starting drinking their yucky duck,
everything was going good.
So, after I played about two or three pieces, you know,
and everybody was fired up.
I said, ladies and gentlemen.
So you know, this is 'ol B
and I never stood you up.
No, B. You always come in time.
I said, yeah.
Well, I got something sad to tell you,
but when I came upstairs,
the boss told me he wasn't going to pay me.
Everybody got quiet. What?
I said, no. He said he wasn't going to pay me
and I ain't telling you what to do,
but I feel that if I'm going to play free,
you should be able to listen free.
(laughing)
I ain't going to tell you what to do.
(laughing)
They went, he never said he ain't going to pay me
and I'm up here playing,
you ought to check on your money.
(laughing)
I ain't telling you to do it,
but you should.
Boy. A little bit later,
the money went one way and the dude went the other.
And I thought, well,
the house if full again.
(laughing)
- Thank you so much for watching.
I made this video because Arun Kumar asked me to.
So, if there's a famous entrepreneur
that you want me to profile next,
leave it in the comments below
and I will see what I can do.
I'd also love to know which of B.B. King's top ten rules
had the greatest impact on you.
Leave it in the comments and I'll join in on the discussion.
Thank you so much for watching.
Continue to believe and I'll see you soon.
(swoosh)
- Well, everybody that looks at me now.
Usually, when I'm talking about my guitar,
it's always Lucille.
And they look at me like that.
And then, I tell them how I gave
the name Lucille to my guitar.
We were playing out near a place
called Twist, Arkansas.
- [Man] Twist, Arkansas?
Okay.
- And they had a place for you to dance,
like over here,
and you would eat over here
and that's where I stayed at most times
when I wasn't on stage.
They had a small stage, you know,
smaller than this.
And I would go in and I would start to play and eat.
Eat and play.
(laughing)
- Sounds good to me.
- And two guys start to fighting.
They do quite a bit of that in Mississippi,
Louisiana, and Arkansas,
near them small joints where they gambled then.
And when these guys started to playing,
this is in winter,
they had a big pail sitting in the middle of the floor
and one of them knocked the other one over on this container
and when he did, well,
it spilled on the floor.
And when it spilled on the floor,
everybody started running out, including me,
and I forgot my guitar.
And I'd never done it before
and never have did it since then.
But, I went back in and got my guitar
and I almost lost my life trying to save it.
And that's when I named my guitar Lucille
because these two guys, I learned,
was fighting about a lady
that worked in the place where they cooked the food.
And I named my guitar Lucille
to remind me to never do that again.
(laughing)
That's how that came about.
- You almost lost your life going back in
to get your guitar. - My guitar, yeah.
- And you named it Lucille
and that's stuck all of these years.
- Yes, all these years.
(mellow blues music)