B.B. King: There Is Always One More Time
David McGee.
Backbeat Books

On September 16, 2005, B. B. King, celebrated his 80th birthday. To commemorate this landmark event in the life of blues music’s greatest living ambassador, Backbeat Books has published B. B. King: There Is Always One More Time, the inaugural entry in its Lives in Music series. Penned by distinguished author, David McGee, the book mixes biography with discography to pay homage to a truly remarkable career and an imposing musical legacy.

            McGee leads us through the formative years of King’s life with a contagious enthusiasm. Growing up impoverished in rural Mississippi King learned early that the blues was about survival. He developed a healthy work ethic toiling in corn and cotton fields and a solid spiritual foundation from the church. His mother instilled in him the importance of personal dignity and treating others with respect. She died when King was just 10 and he sought solace from the devastating pain of her death in music.

            McGee traces King’s musical influences generously interspersing the narrative with biographical cameos of prominent figures we meet along the way. Blind Lemon Jefferson and Lonnie Johnson can be heard from a wind-up Victrola, the big jazz bands of Duke Ellington and Count Basie resound from the pages, Louis Jordan makes a swinging appearance and Muddy Waters adds the earthiness of Chicago to the sound. Jazz great, Charlie Christian, Belgian gypsy stylist Django Reinhardt and single-string picker T-Bone Walker teach King how to play the guitar, while cousin Bukka White offers sage advise on personal appearance, “always dress like you’re going to the bank to borrow money.”

            The book also illuminates milestones in King’s evolution from blues apprentice to recording artist including his disc jockey days as the “Beale Street Blues Boy” selling the alcohol-laced tonic Pepticon on WDIA Radio in Memphis, Tennessee. It was here that King acquired his stage name, his encyclopedic knowledge of blues music and his confidence as a showman. We also experience the bar room fight and harrowing escape from a fire that prompted King to name his guitar “Lucille.”

            When King steps into the studio and onto the world stage in 1949, McGee fittingly shifts the focus of the book to the amazing recording career to which King has devoted himself for more than 50 years. Through painstaking research, McGee’s provides detailed information on track listings, songwriters and key musicians as well as an insightful critique of each of King’s in print albums. Exclusive interviews with major producers such as Bill Szymczyk and Stewart Levine, recording engineers and studio musicians vividly recreate the studio sessions and the creative process behind them. Album by album, the reader follows the fascinating growth of King as a recording artist, his hands-on approach to each project, his willingness to try new ideas and his total commitment to the blues throughout the ups and down of the music business.

            Perhaps the greatest achievement of the book is its portrayal of King as a palpable human being who worked hard to attain stardom through doldrums in his career and problems in his personal life. King also turned his inability to sing and play the guitar simultaneously into an artistic coup by making Lucille an equal partner and the most famous guitar in the world. Ultimately, King emerges triumphant as a time-tested icon whose influence remains all encompassing, whose musical body of works is second to none and who continues to captivate audiences with his charm and pretension-deflating style.

            David McGee is the author of “Go Cat Go: The Life and Times of Carl Perkins,” the country music contributing editor of barnesandnoble.com, a regular contributor to Rolling Stone and former assistant curator for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum.

www.backbeatbooks.com

~Ken Wright