– Global reputation, but private life –
King later added the title “Ambassador for the Blues,” as the US government sent him around the world for concerts, including a triumphant 1979 tour of Russia.
His family life, as biographer Charles Sawyer wrote, was “never normal by ordinary standards.” He told people that when his regular dates with Lucille came between him and a woman, the guitar always won.
He was married and divorced twice, and liked to say he had 15 children by 15 women, but was very closed-mouth about any details. People magazine reported he had eight children. At least two of his children worked with his band, one as a backup singer.
Patty King, considered the youngest of his daughters, took charge of his care at the end of his life and reportedly fought with King’s longtime manager.
B.B. King later regretted that he did not hear the blues too much on the radio.
“So one of the reasons I travel a lot is so I can carry the music to the people. Because if I don’t carry it, it don’t go on the air,” he said in the AFP interview in 2007.
B.B. King also lent his name to a string of blues clubs and restaurants, with the first opening in Memphis in 1991, although he did not focus on the day-to-day operations.
King made his 42nd and last studio album in 2008, “One Kind Favor,” that also brought him his final Grammy.
He recorded the Grammy winning “Riding With the King” with Clapton in 2000: the cover showed Clapton in the front seat of an open limousine chauffeuring a regal King together with Lucille in the back — an uncontestable hierarchy.
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