Riley B. King was born in 1925 on a cotton plantation near Itta Bena, Mississippi, the son of sharecroppers. After his mother left when he was four, he was raised largely by his grandmother, worked a cotton gin in Indianola, and learned his first three chords from a Pentecostal minister who played a Sears Roebuck Silvertone in church. His first guitar cost $15, paid off when his employer docked his wages for two months. Radio broadcasts of King Biscuit Time out of Helena, Arkansas, showed him a profession beyond the fields, and after a failed first stint in Memphis with his cousin Bukka White, he returned polished enough to land a spot on Sonny Boy Williamson's radio show, then a 10-minute slot on WDIA that grew into the Sepia Swing Club. There, the announcer's "Beale Street Blues Boy" was shortened to Blues Boy and finally to B.B.

This epi ...