B.B. King Turns 80, Gets Living Legend Medal, Releases New Album

Sept. 16, 2005 — -- B.B. King has been playing the blues for 60 years. On Monday, the Library of Congress awarded King its Living Legend medal. He has a new album out this week, a new memoir, and today he celebrates his 80th birthday.

"A lot of people think that when you play blues, it's only because you're blue," King said. "I can play blues and feel better because blues to me is sort of like a tonic. It's good for whatever ails you."

His singular style on the guitar comes from growing up on the Mississippi Delta.

"Most of the blues singers usually have a bottleneck that they put on the finger and they can use," he said. "Well, I've got stupid fingers. I could never get 'em to do anything there. But I liked that sound."

King's sound is unmistakably the blues. One musician said his tone is as close to the human heart as you can get.

"I believe this truly, that the musician -- serious musician -- sings or plays an instrument from what he feels inside, I'd say from the heart," he said.

King has played for presidents, popes and audiences throughout the world.

Like so many people, he is deeply connected to the South and is upset by what has happened to Louisiana and Mississippi in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. But he has hope.

"I'm from Mississippi," he said. "I believe that when something is destroyed, generally it comes back better than it was before. I believe that because it's sort of like biblical thinking. As man learned more, he did better. And I think we'll do even better tomorrow."

B.B. King was born Riley King, the son of a Mississippi sharecropper.

"I was a field hand when I was 7 years old," he said. "They didn't have any of the [labor] laws like you have today -- children and all. When you were big enough to do what was necessary to do, you was like the adults."

It was in those cotton fields where he first discovered the blues. The guitar was his way out. At the age of 12, he was singing on the street corner.