Another honor for B.B. King, the last great icon of the blues

BURBANK, Calif. -- The set of NBC's "Tonight Show" was abuzz with pre-broadcast preparations: host Jay Leno rehearsing his monologue, guests getting hair and makeup done, producers and crew scurrying.

But in the studio parking lot, B.B. King was lost in warm reminiscence. Sitting on his trusty tour bus -- he'd just rolled in from his Las Vegas home -- King recalled his first on-air job back in 1949, singing jingles for a health tonic called Pepticon over the airwaves of Memphis, Tenn., radio station WDIA.

Closing his eyes and slapping his thighs in rhythm, King begins to sing:

"Pepticon sure is good

"Pepticon sure is good

"Pepticon sure is good, you can get it anywhere in your neighborhood."

"That's how I got started," says King, a big, beatific smile cutting across his face. "That was a long time ago, man."

It's nearly 60 years since Riley B. King's first appearance on air as an unknown. His "Tonight Show" appearance in late August was seen by millions. These days, the entire world knows and reveres him as B.B. King, the last great icon of the blues.

Approaching age 83 -- his birthday is Sept. 16 -- King found himself in the Los Angeles area promoting a new album and live DVD with a series of interviews and TV appearances. The spate of activity will be capped by a massive celebration in his hometown of Indianola, Miss., where he will witness the grand opening Saturday of the B.B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center.

The site of the museum itself speaks to the symbolic distance King has traveled from his days starting out in the Delta. The lot, which once housed an old brick cotton gin where King worked as a youth, will be transformed into a center for study and a place to celebrate his life as a bluesman and musical ambassador.

King, who has played a homecoming festival in Indianola each year since the '70s, says the idea of a museum has been germinating for a while.

"First, I was going to build a house, and my plans were, when I died, the house would then become a museum," he says. "I got to talking with the city, and they were interested in the idea.

"But they said, why wait until I die? So they came up with the idea of putting a museum together now. Before I knew anything, it was a $15 million project. So I'm honored, so honored, that they would honor me.

"The other thing I'm really glad about is that it's not just going to be about B.B. King, but about the origins of the type of music we do: people like Robert Johnson, Howlin' Wolf, you name 'em. It's going to be a history of the blues, of the guys that kept it going long before me. And they're going to have an educational part where young and old can get a chance to learn about the music -- what it means to us, and what it means to the world today."

What the blues means to the world has a lot to do with King's role in spreading the genre.

King's credits are legion: Hailed as one of the greatest guitarists of all time, he has been given honorary doctorates from Ivy League schools, a Presidential Medal of Freedom and Kennedy Center honors, membership in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and more than a dozen Grammys.

But what has sustained King throughout all the years -- from playing juke joints to the White House -- has been the consistency and the dignity inherent in his music.

On his just-released album, "One Kind Favor," King returns to his roots, revisiting a collection of songs from his earliest years.

"We did go back and do a lot of the songs by the guys who were around before I started," he says. "My idols, like Lonnie Johnson -- I wanted to play like him then, and I still do, but I can't. Blind Lemon Jefferson was another one. With this record, we tried to get that sound that I had back in the early '50s. My voice is nothing like it was, but I think the guitar sorta takes us back there."

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Inside "The Tonight Show" set, King, dressed in a brightly colored tuxedo jacket, made his way to the stage and took a seat alongside the house band.

Host Jay Leno seemed genuinely excited to have King appear, pumping him up with a heartfelt intro and then rising from behind his desk to get a closer look at the performance, bobbing his head along to the music.

King played Blind Lemon Jefferson's "See That My Grave is Kept Clean." His hands moved confidently over the strings of his signature "Lucille" guitar, picking out clean lead lines, while his voice -- a touch lower and less acrobatic than it once was -- infused the lyrics with lived-in truth. When the song was over, Leno came over and knelt at King's feet.

Afterwards, Leno, King and the other guests -- Olympic gymnast Nastia Liukin and comedian Norm MacDonald -- cut a series of network promos.

At one point, MacDonald leaned over and asked King how many dates he still plays a year. "A hundred!" marveled the comedian. At which point Leno elbowed MacDonald and said, "You haven't done a hundred gigs in your whole life!"

The trip to California seemed to remind King of his one last show-business goal: a desire to be "discovered" by Hollywood.

"I think I've been in about 12 or 13 movies, but most of them was cameos. I'm in one movie called 'Amazon Women on the Moon,' and in that I'm soliciting funds for black people with no soul. I'm in 'Blues Brothers 2000' where I'm a car salesman," he says. "But I'd like to do a movie, with some star, where I have a real role, a good part."

Twice married and divorced, King has 15 children.

With the opening of the museum, King says he has been forced -- more than usual -- to look back on his life. He says his success is largely owing to a bit of advice he got as a boy.

"I was 9 years old and -- believe it or not -- a scrawny little thing. And my birth mother, she was dying. She told me this. She said, 'If you be nice to people, there will always be somebody nice to take care of you, to look after you.' And, you know, that's the truth. Every time it seemed like I was going to get in trouble, there was always someone to talk for me, to speak for me. I never had to fight. I was never a bully -- I was too little to beat up anybody. But over the years, it's turned out that I've always had friends that I didn't even know I had.

"I think about everything that's happened and sometimes I want to say I was lucky," he continues. "You know, I believe in God; I believe that maybe the great one smiled down on me. But I also thought I had a little talent. I didn't think I was the best, but I had a little talent. But mostly, I was a pretty good guy."

For more information about the B.B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center, call 662-887-9539 or visit bbkingmuseum.org.

(Bob Mehr is music writer for The Commercial Appeal in Memphis, Tenn. Contact him at mehr(at)commercialappeal.com.)

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com)