B.B. King dies

My first music outing with Mike was BB King's club on Beale Street in Memphis, September 2007.
Growing up on Beale Street, Mike said he saw him perform at least fifty times and he listens to him probably every day.

King died after having had diabetes for many years--at the age of 89.  Without knowing how to read music, he was the king of soul, performing almost up to his death.  He was born on a Mississippi plantation in 1925 and began his career before he was twenty.

"Was he ever married?" I asked Mike.

"He had a love affair with his guitar," he said.  "He wanted to be buried with Lucille [his guitar]"

From NPR:

You can't mention names without talking about his guitar, Lucille. It was actually more than one. The story goes that the first was a $30 acoustic he was playing at a dance in Arkansas when two men got in a fight, kicked over a stove and started a fire. When King was safe outside, he realized he'd left the guitar inside. He ran back into the burning dance hall to save it. After he learned the fight had been over a woman named Lucille, he decided to name his guitar for her to remind himself never to get into a fight over a woman. And since then, every one of his trademark Gibson ES-355s has been named Lucille.

The sound he got out of her was what set him apart. Playing high up on the neck, he'd push a string as he picked it, bending the note to make it cry. He didn't burn a lot of fast licks, but you could feel each note he played.