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."

Early Beginnings

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.

"I'd sit on the street corner, and I would just play gospel songs," King said. "People would come by and they'd pat me on the head and shoulders, but they'd never put anything in the bucket."

But King would find that his fortune would quickly change.

"So someone would come and say, 'Play Louis Jordan' -- very popular then. 'Play Caledonia, play something like that.' And whether right or wrong, I'd try it and when I'd get through they'd say, 'Yeah, here's a quarter, put a dime or something and give the boy something.' So that's why I'm a blues singer today, because that evening, say, from about 1 or 2 o'clock in the evening till 8 or 9 o'clock at night, I'd make $100."

When he was 20, King moved to Memphis, Tenn., and worked as a DJ. On the air, "Blues Boy King" would sing and play the guitar. He was soon discovered, got his own record contract and eventually "Blues Boy" became "B.B."

King says his guitar has always been his most faithful companion.

"That's Lucille," King said of his guitar. "That's my girl. Only girl I ever had that never argues with me."

While on stage, he communicates mostly through Lucille.

"I don't sing and play at the same time," he said. "Lucille is one voice, and I'm another. When one is singing, the other wants to listen."

King and Lucille spend 150 nights a year out on the road. The 80-year-old says he has had only three months off in 60 years, and he has no plans to retire any time soon.

ABC News' Bob Woodruff filed this report for "World News Tonight."