text: Intermediate 
  Much of BB Kings best work was blues but he was always open-minded about and interested in other kinds of music. He bridged musical and cultural differences with warmth and skill. Perhaps it is too early to speak of the last of the bluesmen but it is hard to imagine that any future blues artist will match King. He in uenced thousands of musicians and millions of music fans in a career that lasted 65 years. 
  Riley B King (the B did not seem to stand for a name) was born in Mississippi, the son of African-American farm workers. He learnt the basics of guitar from a family friend and perfected his singing with a quartet of gospel singers. In his early 20s, he moved to Memphis.
  Within a couple of years, he was playing regularly at a bar in West Memphis and he also became a disc jockey, presenting a show on a Memphis radio station. His billing, The Beale Street Blues Boy, was shortened to Blues Boy King and then to BB. After a single session in 1949 for a Nashville label, King began recording for the West Coast-based Modern Records in 1950.
  He had his  rst hit in 1952, with Three OClock Blues, which was number one in the R&B chart for 15 weeks; it was the  rst of many hits. On these and his dozens of other recordings, most of them his own compositions, King developed a style that was innovative but had its roots in blues history. He was always ready to praise the musicians who had in uenced him  he would usually mention T-Bone Walker  rst. He would also cite the earlier blues guitarists Blind Lemon Jefferson and Lonnie Johnson and the jazz players Charlie Christian and Django Reinhardt.
  He once explained that his guitar technique was partly based on his lack of skill: I started to bend notes because I could never play in the bottleneck style. I loved that sound but just couldnt do it. He was modest about his singing, too, a mixture of the style of ballad singers such as Nat King Cole and blues shouters such as Joe Turner and Dr Clayton. Probably his favourite composer and singer was Louis Jordan, whose music he commemorated in the 1999 album Let the Good Times Roll.
  Throughout the 1950s, King was the leading blues artist on an endless series of one-nighters. In 1956, he played 342 gigs. In 1962, he tried to change that working pattern by signing with a major label, ABC, but the  rst records under that contract were rather unsuccessful, both with his fans and with the record company.
  The 1965 album Live at the Regal, however, has become iconic, a turning point in the early listening of many younger musicians. He had further R&B hits with blues numbers including How Blue Can You Get and Paying the Cost to Be the Boss, and, in 1969, he got near the top of the pop charts  where no blues artist had been for many years  with The Thrill Is Gone.
  It took him a while to establish himself with a rock audience but he was brought to their attention by musicians who admired him. About a year and a half ago, he said in 1969, all of a sudden, kids started saying to me, Youre the greatest blues guitarist in the world. And Id say, Who told you that? And theyd say, Mike Bloom eld or Eric Clapton. I owe my new popularity to these youngsters. 
  From then on, King was  rmly established as a leading blues artist. Guided by his manager, Sidney Seidenberg, he went on international concert tours that took him to Japan, Australia, China and Russia. He also gave concerts to prisoners at the Cook County jail in Chicago and at San Quentin, which led to his long involvement in rehabilitation programmes.
  In 1990, King was diagnosed with diabetes and cut back his touring but his followers outside the US could still see him every year or two. He would now deliver most of his act sitting down but the strength of his singing and the  uency of his playing were almost as good as ever. The celebrations for his 80th birthday, in 2005, included an award-winning album of collaborations with Clapton, Mark Knop er, Roger Daltrey, Gloria Estefan and others, tributes from musicians as diverse as Bono, Amadou Bagayoko and Elton John, and a goodbye tour that was not a goodbye at all.
  In 2009, King received a Grammy award, for best traditional blues album, for One Kind Favor. In 2012, he performed at a concert at the White House, where the US President, Barack Obama, joined him to sing Sweet Home Chicago. King was twice married and twice divorced. He is survived by 11 children by various partners; four others died before him.