B.B. King Homecoming festival honors memory of blues legend

FILE-In this Aug. 22, 2012 photograph, the then 86-year-old B.B. King thrills a crowd of several hundred people at the annual B.B. King Homecoming, a free concert on the grounds of an old cotton gin where he worked as a teenager many years ago, in Indianola, Miss. Festival organizers said this year's festival was to have been a tribute to the then living King, who died May 14, 2015. Now they are calling it a memorial celebration. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis, File) FILE-In this Aug. 22, 2012 photograph, the then 86-year-old B.B. King thrills a crowd of several hundred people at the annual B.B. King Homecoming, a free concert on the grounds of an old cotton gin where he worked as a teenager many years ago, in Indianola, Miss. Festival organizers said this year's festival was to have been a tribute to the then living King, who died May 14, 2015. Now they are calling it a memorial celebration. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis, File)

By Associated Press May 23, 2015 3 min read

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) – Hundreds of music fans are expected to let the good times roll Sunday at the 35th annual B.B. King Homecoming Festival, a free gathering that the legendary bluesman started in his hometown of Indianola, Mississippi.

Performers this year include a country blues band called the North Mississippi Allstars; a Bentonia, Mississippi, blues guitarist and singer, Jimmy “Duck” Holmes; and a children’s choir based at the B.B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center in Indianola.

King played at the free festival dozens of times. He drew a larger than usual crowd in 2014, which was already billed as the final homecoming performance for the King of the Blues, who was 88 at the time.

While King was still alive, organizers were planning this year’s event as a tribute to him. Since his death on May 14, they are calling it a memorial celebration.

The festival is held on the grounds of the museum that opened in 2008.