“Blues Boy”: How a kid named Riley became BB King
Nobody likes it when an otherwise entertaining podcast or YouTube video suddenly devolves into a 15-minute scripted advertisement, but this phenomenon is hardly unique to the 21st century.
Back in the early days of radio, in fact, sponsor-centric broadcasts helped introduce the world to many artists who might otherwise have never played beyond their local street corners or juke joints.
The most famous of these influential commercial radio shows, arguably, is ‘King Biscuit Time’ out of Helena, Arkansas, which has been on the air since 1941 and is still going today, making it one of the longest-running radio programmes in history. During its original run, ‘King Biscuit Time’ became one of the first on-air showcases for American blues musicians, with legendary harmonica master Sonny Boy Williamson serving as the host. Among its most loyal listeners from the outset was a Mississippi teen and aspiring singer named Riley B King, later to be known as BB.
“The show was sponsored by King Biscuit Flour,” BB recalled in a 1993 chat with Scripps Howard News, making it clear there was no relation between himself and this particular King. “[Sonny Boy] was the artist that represented them on air, 15 minutes a day, Monday through Friday.”
‘King Biscuit Time’ served as a sort of beacon for BB and countless other young musicians in the American South, who could now have the more tangible goal of being heard by a wider audience. In King’s case, the show became a motivator during his humble days developing his voice as a kid in Indianola, Mississippi.
“I used to go sit on street corners in my little hometown,” King said. “At the time I was working on the plantation making 22 dollars a week. And I could go on the street corners on one Saturday afternoon and make 50 or 60 dollars—sometimes even 100.”
King was singing in a variety of different styles back then, with a lot of old gospel tunes in the mix. He soon noticed, however, that the people who requested the gospel songs would often reward him with a compliment rather than a dollar.
“They never tipped,” he said. “But people who generally asked me to play the blues would give me a tip—or sometimes a beer. So you can see the motivation.”
Inspired to focus more on his blues playing, King eventually travelled north to Memphis, where he got the chance to perform on Sonny Boy Williamson’s new ‘King Biscuit’ spinoff programme on KWEM. Those guest spots, in turn, generated enough attention that King was soon offered a show of his own on Memphis station WDIA, sponsored by a health tonic called Pepticon. In order to pep up the Pepticon show, though, the promoters felt that Riley King needed a catchier name, and so he started introducing himself as ‘Beale Street Blues Boy’ King, a reference to the famous street in Memphis that was the centre of the city’s blues scene.
That nickname was later shortened to ‘Blues Boy’, and finally, just “BB.”
Over the next half-century, the Blues Boy became arguably the most famous and respected bluesman of them all, an influential touchstone as much for a generation of British rock nn’ rollers as he was for the players that came up listening to him on the radio in Memphis.
“Blues, to me, has to do with people, places and things,” BB said in 1995. “It’s a way of life. The way we lived in the past, the way we’re living today, and the way I believe we will live in the future. We’re all concerned about something. We speak out about it. And a lot of times the undertone has to do with a lover . . . But overall, it’s usually something that we’re trying to say and make a point.”
