When Riley B. King first arrived in Memphis in the summer on 1946, he
searched on Beale Street for his cousin Bukka White. After looking for
Bukka for a few days, Riley finally found him and Bukka took young Riley
in. For the next ten months, Bukka schooled Riley in the art of the blues.
Although Riley and Bukka jammed together in private, they never played
in public. Riley's talents were improving and he profited from impromptu
jam sessions with other blues musicians he had met in and around the
Memphis area. Bukka had prepared Riley for his life as a bluesman by
teaching him everything from how to hold his guitar to phrasing lyrics.
Bukka's most important trait which he impressed upon Riley was his durability, and without
it, B.B. King would not be who he is today.
After ten months in Memphis with Bukka, Riley decided that his music
career was getting nowhere. Besides that, he missed his wife and had left
other responsibilities back in Indianola. Riley returned to Indianola, and in
1947, he and his wife Martha raised a crop on the Johnson Barrett
plantation. By end of the crop season in 1948, Riley had earned enough
money to pay off all of his debts by sharecropping, driving a tractor for $22.50 per week,
loading trucks and playing guitar on street corners. In late 1948 he headed back to Memphis,
this time bound and determined to make it in the music business.
When Riley returned to Memphis, he went to look for Sonny Boy Williamson who had a blues music radio show on station KWEM. Sonny Boy was actually Aleck "Rice" Miller, who has been commonly referred to as Sonny Boy Williamson #2. Riley had met Sonny Boy earlier in Indianola and was friends with his guitarist Robert "Junior" Lockwood. Once Riley had found Sonny Boy, he asked him if he could play a song on his blues radio show. When Riley had convinced Sonny Boy to let him play, Sonny Boy touted Riley as a new talent and the radio station was flooded with calls. Sonny Boy then set up Riley with a gig for which he himself had overbooked as a backup for his preferred show. Sonny Boy was in a bind, and Riley now had his big chance to play in front of a live crowd at Miss Annie's Saloon in West Memphis.
Riley couldn't have picked a better time to return to Memphis. Miss Annie
told Riley that if he was to become a regular performer at the saloon, he
would have to promote the business on the radio. On June 7, 1947, a new
radio station, WDIA, went on the air. By 1948, the station was turned into
one of the first all black staffed and managed radio stations. Riley went to
WDIA and asked the popular DJ, Nat Williams, if he could make a record. Surprised by
Riley's request, one of the station's two owners, Bert Ferguson, had an idea. The station had
just secured an advertising contract for a health tonic named Pepticon, the competitor for the
tonic Hadacol, which was promoted by Sonny Boy Williamson on KWEM. Ferguson set Riley
up with a ten minute spot in which he could play his guitar and sing anything he liked, as long
as he promoted Pepticon. Riley's advertising jingle was:
"Pepticon, Pepticon, sure is good - You can get it anywhere in your neighborhood" *
Riley became known as the Pepticon boy. Because of his popularity, the radio station expanded his program and promoted him to a DJ. Riley's show was called the "Sepia Swing Club." He played recordings by black artists, played his guitar and also sang requests from listeners. Now that he was a DJ, Riley needed a catchy name. He started out as the "Beale Street Blues Boy," later he changed it to "Blues Boy King," and finally shortened it to the now famous "B.B. King."
B.B. King's popularity was spreading and he made his first recordings in
1949 for the Bullet Recording and Transcription Company. Jim Bulleit had
recently expanded Bullet Records into the race record market with a series
of blues recordings called the "Sepia" series. It was these early recordings
which caught the attention of the Bihari brothers, Jules, Saul and Joe, who controlled Modern
Records. Modern issued three labels: Kent, Crown and RPM. In the summer of 1949, B.B.
signed a recording contract with Modern Records which lasted for 10 years.
During the last six months of 1949, RPM released six B.B. King singles. A good example of
one of B.B.'s earliest RPM recordings is the song,
"B.B. Boogie," - from Everyday I Have
the Blues, (182 K, 17 sec.) Copyright ©, TEL-STAR Records, 1991. Although none of the
recordings were a national success, locally B.B. was quite popular. B.B.'s airplay of his
records, along with his public appearances, built him a steady circuit of Roadhouses and juke
joints where he was the top attraction. These places might be no larger than tiny roadside
hash houses or as big as large dance halls. B.B. was a local celebrity, but outside of
Memphis, no one had heard of him. He was moving up fast and needed a manager. B.B.'s
first manager was a Beale Street pool hall owner, Robert Henry. Henry also operated a
record shop, an amusement park and a few restaurants.
Just after Christmas in 1951, B.B.'s seventh RPM single, "Three O'Clock Blues," a Lowell
Fulson tune, hit Billboard's R&B record chart."Three O'Clock Blues," - from The
Fabulous B.B. King, (133 K, 12 sec.) Copyright ©, VIRGIN Records, 1991. By early 1952,
the song reached the number one position and stayed there for 15 weeks. B.B. had finally
received national recognition as a blues musician. As a result of the success of the song,
Robert Henry was able to get B.B. a contract with Universal Artists in New York, which set
him up with shows at the three major black theaters in the country: the Howard Theater in
Washington, D.C., the Royal Theater in Baltimore, and the Apollo Theater in Harlem. Less
than 18 months after he had first played on Sonny Boy Williamson's radio show, B.B. took a
leave of absence from his job at WDIA and left Memphis for Washington to start on his first
national tour.
As a result of his new found success, B.B.'s marriage was now under a heavy strain. Without any children, the couple had to either travel on the road together, or separate during tours. Martha King knew that as an entertainer, B.B. was subject to adoring young female fans. It was only a matter of time before the tension resulted in divorce. While B.B. was on tour, he got word that Martha had left Memphis and had filed for the divorce. Although he was crushed by the news, it inspired him to write the song "Woke Up This Morning," which was his first big hit after "Three O'Clock Blues." In 1952, after 8 years of marriage, B.B. and Martha King were divorced.
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Text copyright ©, 1996 Jim Kerekes & Dennis O'Neill
* Charles Sawyer, The Arrival of B.B. King (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, 1980) page 62.
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