BB King’s Celebrated ‘One Kind Favor’ Available Now

Rolling Stone says "This isn't just B.B. King's best album in years, it's one of the strongest studio sets of his career, standing alongside classics such as Singin' the Blues and Lucille. Where those early titles highlighted his youthful, wailing vocals and stinging guitar, this one plays to King's current strengths: the tear-stained vibrato of his mature voice, punctuated by raunchy licks."

 Purchase your copy today at the B.B. King Blues Store - Click here

» www.bbkingstore.com

He is 82 years old and has been performing for more than 50 years, with 15 Grammys under his belt. And tonight you will get an inside look at him.

B.B. King is releasing a new CD entitled "Live," and you get to join him in my home town and Appleton, Wisconsin behind the scenes of his concert, and even inside his tour bus.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

VAN SUSTEREN: How many concerts a year do you do?

B.B. KING, MUSICIAN: Now we have cut down quite a bit. I'm 82 years old now, so I've stopped doing — we used to average, until last year, I believe, about 250 concerts per year. This year I'll probably do about 100.

VAN SUSTEREN: Is it work for you, or is it fun?

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Show Info
Airs Weekdays at 10 p.m. ET
E-mail the Show: ontherecord@foxnews.com Greta Van Susteren's Bio Read the GretaWire Interview Archive Greta's Pod Cast KING: Both. It's both.

VAN SUSTEREN: Who gave you your first guitar?

KING: No one.

VAN SUSTEREN: Where did you get it?

KING: Bought it from a guy that lived not too far from Mike Boston, the man I worked for. And he had this little red Stella guitar, and he said he would sell it because I went nuts when I saw it. I was making $15 a month then.

VAN SUSTEREN: Doing what?

KING: Being what they call a house boy — everything; anything that needed to be done around the house. Chores was picking up chips to make fire and milking cows. I milked 20 cows a day. As I said, I was making $15 a month then, I asked my boss would he buy it for me and take out half of it the first month and half the next. So he did, and that is how I got my first guitar.

VAN SUSTEREN: So you picked it up, and were you just a natural?

KING: I would sit on the street corners in my hometown of Indianola, Mississippi, and I would play. And, generally, I would start playing gospel songs. People would come by on the street — you live in time square, you know how they do it — they would bunch up. And they would always compliment me on gospel tunes, but they would tip me when I played blues.

Now you know why I'm a blues singer.

VAN SUSTEREN: Well, everyone knows who Lucille, your guitar. Why is your guitar named "Lucille"?

KING: I used to play — when I first started trying to be professional, I disk jockey from 1949 to 1955 in Memphis, Tennessee, and I was quite popular there as a disk jockey.

And I could go over at a place called Twist, Arkansas — it's still there — and a guy had a nightclub over there. I would do, as they say in Las Vegas today, forward. In other words, you go play and he doesn't guarantee you anything, but if you're lucky and you have quite a few people come in, you get most of the money that comes in through the doors. So you may make yourself 50 dollars, 60 dollars, 100 dollars, maybe.

And it would get quite cold there in Twist, Arkansas, so they would take a something like a big garbage pail — picture a big pail — set it in the middle of the dance floor and half fill it with kerosene. They would light that kerosene, and that's what we used for heat.

Today, if somebody did that, I would start running out of here. But when you're young, like you guys, you are daring and do anything.

So this particular night, two guys start to fight. One knocked the other one over on this container. And when they did it spilled on the floor. It was already burning so it looked like a river of fire. Everyone started to run for the front door to get out, including B.B. King.

But when I got out, I realized that I left my guitar. It wasn't the same little red guitar; this was another one. And I went back for it.

And when I went back to get my guitar — the building was a wooden building burning rapidly, so it started to fall in around me and I almost lost my life trying to save it.

The next morning we found that these two guys that were fighting were fighting about a lady that worked in the little nightclub. I never did meet her, but I learned that her name was Lucille. I named the guitar Lucille to remind me not to do a thing like that again. That's how it came about.

VAN SUSTEREN: Is there an original Lucille and there have been subsequent Lucilles?

KING: The original Lucille, I would pay $100,000 to get it back.

VAN SUSTEREN: Where is the original Lucille?

KING: If I knew I would get it.

VAN SUSTEREN: When was the last time you saw the original Lucille?

KING: In Brooklyn. I went up to visit a friend one night and left it in the trunk of my car. That year most of General Motors' cars, the trunk key would fit, but I didn't know it until that night.

Somebody went down and went in my trunk — I had an Oldsmobile, and they went into the Oldsmobile trunk of the car — took my guitar, the amplifier, and the battery out. That's the last time I have seen her.

And I would give $100000 for that original if I could get it back. I put out—I offered rewards: $5000, $10000 and so on.

I guess whoever got it never knew what they was getting because my name wasn't on that one. Nobody has ever came up with it.

VAN SUSTEREN: How many CDs or albums have you done?

KING: I have to be honest with you, I really don't know. But the last time I tried to count, I think it was somewhere in the neighborhood of 90 CDs and LPs combined; but singles, it's over 500.

VAN SUSTEREN: You have a new one that just came out.

KING: Yes.

VAN SUSTEREN: That's what I want people to know about. And that's a live concert?

KING: It is live. I was trying my best to show the people that don't know me or know how I perform what I do on stage, I was trying to give them a little bit of a lesson of what I do and how I do it when I'm playing concerts.

And I think I did pretty good. Maybe I talk too much on it, but I think it's pretty good.

VAN SUSTEREN: Which song do you think the audience wants to hear every night?

KING: "The Thrill is Gone."

VAN SUSTEREN: Do you enjoy playing that as much as everyone wants to hear it?

KING: I will tell you a little secret and you better not tell it.

VAN SUSTEREN: We won't tell anybody, don't worry. It's just between us.

KING: OK, it's just between us: I play it every night as I feel it every night, not as I recorded it when I first recorded it. I play it every night as I feel it then, so it's fresh, it's always fresh.

So no, I never get tired of playing it.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

Track List:

1. Caldonia   14/10/78
2. I Like The Life 14/10/78
3. When The Evening Sun Goes Down 14/10/78
4. When It All Comes Down  14/10/78
5. The Thrill Is Gone   14/10/78
6. I’m Gonna Move Out of My Neighbourhood  4/7/91
7. When Love Comes To Town 4/7/91
8. Let The Good Times Roll 4/7/91
9. Stormy Monday Blues  4/7/91
10. Ain’t Nobody Home  4/7/91
11. Mistreated  4/7/91
12. How Blue Can You Get  4/7/91
13. Paying The Cost To Be The Boss  30/3/89
14. The Thrill Is Gone  30/3/89

Official UK Release date is Feb 25 2008.  Preorder your copy today!

Superfly Productions and A.C. Entertainment are proud to announce the initial lineup for the 2008 Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival. The seventh annual four-day camping and music festival will be held on June 12-15 on the same beautiful 700-acre farm in Manchester, Tennessee, 60 miles south of Nashville. A full list of confirmed acts follows, and more will be announced in the coming weeks. The final Bonnaroo 2008 lineup will total over 100 bands and over 20 comedians performing on 13 stages over four days.

Tickets go on sale exclusively through www.bonnaroo.com on Saturday, February 16 at 12:00 PM EDT.

2008 Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival Confirmed Artists:


Pearl Jam
Metallica
Jack Johnson
Kanye West
Robert Plant and Alison Krauss Featuring T Bone Burnett
Phil Lesh & Friends
My Morning Jacket
The Allman Brothers Band
The Raconteurs
Willie Nelson
Death Cab for Cutie
B.B. King
Sigur Ros
Levon Helm and the Ramble on the Road
Ben Folds
O.A.R.
The Bluegrass Allstars Feat. Luke Bulla, Sam Bush, Jerry Douglas, Bela Fleck, Edgar Meyer and Bryan Sutton
M.I.A.
Umphrey's McGee
Iron & Wine
Yonder Mountain String Band
The Swell Season
Talib Kweli
Derek Trucks & Susan Tedeschi’s Soul Stew Revival
Gogol Bordello
Broken Social Scene
Robert Randolph’s Revival
Rilo Kiley
Mastodon
Lupe Fiasco
Against Me!
Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings
Pat Green
Ozomatli
Tegan & Sara
Solomon Burke
Drive-By Truckers
!!!
The Avett Brothers
Israel Vibration
Abigail Washburn & the Sparrow Quartet featuring Bela Fleck
Phil Lesh / Larry Campbell / Jackie Greene
Aimee Mann
Ladytron
The Fiery Furnaces
Orchestra Baobab
Ghostland Observatory
Jose Gonzalez
Dark Star Orchestra
Minus the Bear
Donavon Frankenreiter
Lez Zeppelin
State Radio
Battles
Jakob Dylan
Two Gallants
The Sword
Vampire Weekend
Little Feat
Nicole Atkins
The Felice Brothers
Mason Jennings
MGMT
The Lee Boys
Black Kids
Serena Ryder
Steel Train
Grupo Fantasma
Back Door Slam

Bonnaroo Comedy:
Bonnaroo Late Night Chat About with David Cross
Janeane Garofalo
Zach Galifianakis
Jim Norton
Brian Posehn
Mike Birbiglia
John Mulaney
Michelle Buteau

More artists to be announced!

BB King to be Honored by NARM

01/08/2008

Blues icon B.B. King, an American treasure who has recorded 150 albums and accepted 14 GRAMMY Awards, will receive the National Association of Recording Merchandisers (NARM) Chairman’s Award For Sustained Creative Achievement during the organization’s 50th Annual Convention, which will be held May 4 through May 7 at the San Francisco Marriott. King will accept his Award during the 50th Anniversary Gala Dinner, which will be Wednesday, May 7.

“NARM’s membership — on whose behalf we bestow this prestigious Award — applauds King’s amazing career and the way he has inspired and influenced so many musicians over the years,” said NARM President Jim Donio. “Today King is more popular, more cherished and more relevant than ever. At the age of 82, he is still out on the road, playing for the people, making TV appearances, and cutting tracks for his next album. We are honored to have B.B. King join us as part of NARM’s 50th Anniversary celebration.”

King will become a member of an exclusive and exceptionally talented club of artists who have received the NARM Chairman’s Award. Past recipients include Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, Stevie Wonder, The Bee Gees, Smokey Robinson, Michael Jackson, Barbra Streisand, Leonard Bernstein, Nat King Cole, Rod Stewart, Garth Brooks, Lena Horne, Billy Joel, Fleetwood Mac, Dionne Warwick, Kenny Rogers, Liza Minnelli, Carlos Santana, Quincy Jones, Kool & The Gang, and Chicago.
Over his 60-plus year career, King has developed one of the world’s most identifiable guitar styles. King’s sound is his signature, integrating his precise and complex vocal-like string blends and his left hand vibrato, both of which have become indispensable components of Rock guitar vocabulary.

He is still light on his feet, singing and playing the Blues with relentless passion. And, he has no plans for slowing down. Bowing February 19, 2008, is a new “B.B King Live In Tennessee” CD/DVD (Geffen/UMe) a live concert event recorded at his namesake clubs in both Nashville and Memphis.
He also just finished recording his 150th album that’s expected to debut in September 2008. Also set to open in September is a museum in King’s honor that is being built in his home state of Mississippi. A decade in the making, the museum is partially located within an existing abandoned cotton gin, Mississippi’s last one, where as a youngster, King once worked.

The 2007 festival, which Rolling Stone called “a marathon of solos and joy,” no doubt was the stuff of dreams for the fans in attendance as well as for Clapton and friends. The Festival featured a multi-generational array of talent spanning John Mayer to Jeff Beck to B.B. King that Modern Guitars Magazine dubbed an “incredible nexus of old-school electric guitar titans and younger upstarts.”

Shot in HD, the double-DVD set features 38 tracks, and also gives viewers an all-access pass with extraordinary behind-the-scenes footage captured backstage at this all-star, six-string summit. The audio is presented in 5.1 Surround Sound.

Buy the DVD Now

Spend New Years Eve with the King of the Blues!

B.B. King will be playing a New Years Eve concert on Dec 31, 2007 at Star of the Desert Arena in Primm, NV (only 40 mins from Las Vegas!)

Fan Club Presale tickets for this exciting evening are on sale NOW and will end on 10.25.07 at 4pm EDT. Get your tickets now and plan on a great night of music!

Make it a complete night by booking a room at the Primm Valley Casino Resort by calling the reservation desk at 1-800-386-7867.