I posted this another forum some time ago, but ...
The man we now know as B.B. King lived alone on a farm at 14 years of age! He worked the small farm all alone with no adult supervision whatsoever. To pass the time he strung guitar strings in his doorway and plucked at them when he was bored. That’s how he learned to play the guitar.
But this extraordinary young man was NOT B.B. King.
This nameless young man left the farm and was just one of many struggling bluesmen in the American South. Now, you have to understand that there were a lot of guys running around pretending to be famous musicians. The public in these rural areas by and large knew these bluesmen by word-of-mouth, not Photos. So if some guy came into town claiming to be, say, Leadbelly, you really couldn't disprove it. Until you heard the pretender play, that is.
Now at the time this young man was roaming around and struggling for work, there was a truly talented musician playing around the South called The Beale Street Blues Boy. This was the REAL B.B. King. This authentic B.B. recorded for Bullet Records and even the fledgling Sun Records in the 40’s.
Meanwhile, the struggling fake B.B. did a dastardly thing by sometimes pretending to BE the Blues Boy … and was a good enough guitar player that many bought it.
Now while all this was going on, the REAL Blues Boy was performing at a dance in Arkansas. While he played a couple of patrons of this “Juke Joint” (a ramshackle club hidden in the woods) started fighting. These two fighters accidentally knocked over a huge tub filled with liquor …and a fire resulted when this liquor came into contact with the kerosene lamps that lined the walls and kept the place lit. The place caught fire, but only one person was killed. The famous Beale Street Blues Boy!
So only the fake Blues Boy was left. And thus he became the REAL Blues Boy. Now, no one is sure if he felt guilty for usurping another man’s life or not, but he refused to be called “Blues Boy” after the authentic one’s death. He shortened his nickname to simply B.B.
Today, B.B. tells the story of how HE was the Blues Boy who was in the fire, but he survived ... having raced outdoors to safety.
But the REAL Blues Boy had something that phony “B.B.” didn’t have … the Gibson guitar that was almost as famous as he was. THAT guitar burned in the fire right along with the authentic Blues Boy.
But how does the CURRENT B.B. explain the guitar’s absence?
Well he often repeats the fanciful tale about how, upon realizing that he’d left his beloved guitar inside the burning juke joint, he rushed back inside to retrieve it, almost getting killed again by the fire in the process. B.B. then tells us that, when he later found out that the fight had been over a woman named Lucille, he decided to give the name to his guitar to remind him never to do a crazy thing like fight over a woman.
In truth, the name "Lucille" was probably a form of Lucifer For it has been stated that the original Blues Boy was dead as a result of making a wrong move with some pretty dark mystical forces. He was the only one killed in the fire.
The phony B.B. claims the guitar was heavily damaged by the fire, and that’s the reason he tells fans (who had heard of the famous guitar) he doesn’t play it anymore. When persistent fans of the REAL Blues Boy asked to see the charred damaged remains of the guitar, he told them that it was stolen from the trunk of his car New York!
Sometime after the fire, the phony B.B. himself disappears for four days. It is said that he visited someone who “reinstated” the spirit of the real Blues Boy into the phony B.B.’s body. Some even say he went to the unmarked patch of earth where the real Blues Boy had been interred.
When B.B. returns to the so-called “Chitlin Circuit” of clubs and cafes where he played, he performed a song called "Three O'Clock Blues," and blew everyone away. He then began touring nationally, wowing everyone with a style that was a mix of Blind Lemon Jefferson, T-Bone Walker, Sonny Boy Williams and others. When asked how he’d managed to improve so quickly, the response was something on the order of “I’m playing for two now.”
B.B. met the original Paul McCartney just before Rubber Soul. When Beatles publicist Pete Bennett and Beatles promoter Sid Bernstein got together for a project separate from their principle clients years later, the Beatles ran into B.B. again. But B.B. noticed that Paul was different.
Allegedly Paul tells B.B. that he isn’t the original Paul McCartney, and B.B. laughs and says something like “Well hell, I’m not the real B.B. King!” I guess B.B. wasn’t surprised because by this time he’d already been paling around with Eric Clapton, who SOME say …
Okay, that's the legend. The TRUTH may be that the government (C.I.A. or F.B.I. whatever) got wind of the fact that B.B. wasn't the original Blues Boy and helped him along for their own nefarious reasons. For all we know they may have had something to do with the demise of the original Blues Boy.
Notice on B.B. King’s website
www.bbking.com/ how he speaks, with clear sadness, of his desire that his “grave be kept clean”. If what was said is true about how he went to the grave of the original Blues Boy to reinstate his spirit into HIS body, I can see why this would be of some concern to Mr. King
This is just things I've heard from my great-Aunt and step-Grandfather ... both of whom tell me that the current phony B.B. King is a MUCH nicer, approachable guy than the original who, apparently, was a bit of an arsehole.
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