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Point of Honor. A native of the Mississippi Delta, King left school after the ninth grade to work as a farm laborer. He learned to play the guitar from an uncle who was a Baptist minister, sang in gospel groups, performed for coins on the street corners of dusty Southern towns. In 1948, he moved to Memphis and started out as a disk jockey and singer, billing himself as the "Beale St. Blues Boy." That was soon shortened to Blues Boy, finally to B. B. (his real first name is Riley).
Despite temptations to slick up his style for commercial appeal, King has made it a point of honor to remain an uncompromising blues boy. "I'm me," he says. "Blues is what I do best. If Frank Sinatra can be tops in his field, Nat Cole in his, Bach and Beethoven in theirs, why can't I be great, and known for it, in blues?" Today the answer seems to be: he can.