B.B. King Interview (page: 3 / 7) King of the Blues	Print Interview

When you were a kid working the farm in the Mississippi Delta, could you have imagined that Riley King would become B.B. King and that you would have this kind of life?

B.B. King: No. I never dreamed of it. My cousin and I would go out singing, wouldn't get in until late. We'd sleep and they'd have a hard time waking us up in the morning to go pick cotton. Now if we don't pick well, my uncle and my aunt -- they're not going to be happy at all. But we got to the place where we thought we was great. I think the most I ever picked was about 480 pounds a day, but my cousin was better. He would pick 500 and more. So we would pick a small bale of cotton every day, so they would let us sleep just a little bit longer because they knew when we come I was going to beat everybody else anyway.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. I used to think then that when I got older, being that preacher and what have you, I was going to have me a little farm. Not a plantation, a little farm. I could picture seeing myself plowing, my mule or on my tractor. Picture seeing a beautiful woman with my two or three kids coming out, bringing me some water to the farm where I'm working at. I don't want her to work. I want to work for her. I want her to come up and bring me my little kids, bring me some water or a piece of pie or something. Those were my dreams, not this. Those were my dreams, but when this did start to happen, and when I started to feel for real that I could do what I was doing, the way the people treated me, I was sort of like a guest at someone's home. I don't want to do anything to make them not be happy that they have a guest, me.

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What did you do after you left school?

B.B. King: After the tenth grade I started doing like most kids do, not paying much attention to homework. I started going to do other things. Then I started to be what we call a regular hand on the plantation. Up there in Mississippi --I keep using the words "up there" because the Delta is around Indianola, Greenwood, Greenville. Past Greenwood going east you go into what we call the hills. Kilmichael is up there.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. I used to chop cotton. I did all these things when I was seven. I was considered a regular hand when I was seven years old. I used to bale hay. I guess I did everything that farmers usually do and they expected me, the men expected me to do what they did and I did. And, I started to do more of it after I had dropped out of school because I made a little more money. Finally I learned -- I was kind of into -- today I guess you would say technology because I learned to drive tractors and I was pretty good. I had never heard the word "superstar" but when I think about it today, I was a superstar tractor driver. I loved it.

I loved it for several reasons. On Mr. Johnson Barrett's plantation, we plowed the whole plantation. I'm going to try to find out how many acres of land he cultivated. I'll tell you, you could ride 30 or 40 minutes and you still would be on his plantation. I mean doing 50 or 60 miles an hour, so you can figure out how much land that was.

But as a tractor driver I was popular. Hey, the girls look at you. I made a lot of money. I've been crazy about girls all my life. That was my downfall, I guess. It still is. But I made a lot of money. My salary compared to everybody else was great. I made $22.50 a week. I have chopped cotton for 75 cents a day. I've picked cotton for 35 cents a 100. When you're driving a tractor, you're sitting up there, all you got to do is use your expertise to keep it straight and don't plow up the cotton, which I didn't do too often because Mr. Barrett wouldn't have put up with it. So you slept very well at night having to do that every day. My music and being a tractor driver seemed to make me popular with the people.

I wasn't a bad guy. I've never been in trouble. I got put in jail one night after I was a man. I was speeding and they caught me down in the Mississippi Delta and put me in jail. I'll never forget that. I thought about that every time I started to almost get in trouble. I didn't like that place.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. I'd go to town on Saturday, after I would get through with my tractor, and sit on the street corners with my little guitar. I had a red Stella guitar, and I'd play and I'd sing, starting with gospel all the time. I'd sing me a gospel song and people would -- and I guess I was kind of smart in a way because I knew where the white people passed and the black people passed, so I'd sit right at that corner where the white folks had to pass me going this way and that way and the black folks passed me going this way and that way. So, some or all would stop and listen to me because I guess I made enough noise. I had my big hat sitting down there, or a bucket or something for them to put tips in. And, people that would ask me to play, or request a song -- when I finished playing it, if it was a gospel song they would pat me on the head and the shoulders and they would applaud. "Boy, that was nice. Keep it up. You're going to be good one day." But they didn't put nothing in the hat. But, the people who would ask me to play a blues would always put something in the hat. Now you know why I'm a blues singer. That's how it started.

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When did you know that music was going to be your life?

B.B. King: When the people started putting the money in the hat. That's when. I just hoped I could be good enough to keep them doing it. So far they still do it.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. I happen to think that the great spirit God made us all, put us all here for a reason. And all of us have something to do, and I think we have -- there's a word I used to hear a lot called "Your Brother's Keeper." So I believe that I am my brother's keeper. So, I think that there's a place for playing the guitar. There's a place for singing the blues. I'm harming nobody. People used the word quite often -- there was a word, I guess, that came from the early slaves, when a person sang blues as I do or did, they call it "singing them old reels." Now I haven't found out yet what that meant, "the reels," but I do know what they meant when they said "the Devil's music." But, I started thinking to myself, and I still do, they don't equate a bus driver or a truck driver or the guy plowing the mules with working for the Devil. Why do my singing and my playing have to be working for the Devil? I tell stories like other people do in song. So, I started thinking, you know, maybe they got something for themselves, but I don't see where I'm doing anything wrong to anyone, so why shouldn't I? And, I started to work on it.

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