Atlantic Monthly Press / “King of the Blues: The Rise and Reign of B.B. King”“KING OF THE BLUES: THE RISE AND REIGN OF B.B. KING” by Daniel de Visé (Atlantic Monthly Press, 496 pages, $30).
“King of the Blues: The Rise and Reign of B.B. King” is touted as the first “full-length and authoritative” biography of the Mississippi Delta-born, Memphis-minted guitar great. It was worth the wait and (at 496 pages) the weight, as author Daniel de Visé has a whole lot of living and a lifetime of blues to chronicle.
B.B. King, who died in 2015 at age 89, gets the royal treatment from his biographer, and rightly so. We get it all, a life in full, from dirt to gold, roadhouse to the White House, tractor (the mode of transportation on his first date with future first wife Martha) to Cadillac (a pink-and-cream El Dorado with blue-and-white tires and a battery-powered TV).
We see B.B. as young Riley, stuttering and girl-crazy, getting a blues man’s version of religion when he sees sanctified preacher Archie Fair play guitar in church on Sunday. Reverend Fair “filled the room with the low thunder of his voice and the sweet tang of his guitar,” de Visé writes.
We see Riley seduced by the “shapely curves” of a guitar and entranced by the 78 rpm sounds of Blind Lemon Jefferson, Bessie Smith and Lonnie Johnson at the cabin of his great-aunt Mima, the snuff-dipping free spirit who was “the settlement’s resident hipster.”