Seeing BB King perform at the Grammys last Sunday was the highlight of my night. I was on my couch, mind you, not in the audience at the Staples Center. I marveled at the way he glowed on stage. The man is in his early 80s. His early 80s! I guess as long as he has his love, Lucille, he’ll never stop being a shredder. While gnawing away at my seventh Subway sandwich that week, I recalled the first time I met BB back in August. (Damn, that feels like a long time ago.) He left the kind of impression only a true hero and legend could.
Old Blog Post from August 28, 2008
I met an icon yesterday. My heart was broken and mended back together yesterday. I cried on the inside during an interview yesterday. I praised the world and all its greatness yesterday. I met BB King yesterday.
After driving all over Los Angeles, while fighting off fits of road rage, I went to the Sheraton Universal to interview the great BB King for the Associated Press. I had never met him, and to be honest I don’t listen to his music regularly. But he has always been a man and musician, whom I have admired and respected for his tenacity and his legacy.
We talked for 45 minutes. I’m usually lucky if I get a good solid 10 minutes with a celebrity, especially one as beloved as BB. But there was something special about our conversation. Under the hot lights in the stuffy hotel room filled with photographers and publicists, an alchemy materialized.
Of course, we met to talk about his latest CD “One Kind Favor” and the museum opening in his honor in Indionola, Mississippi. But the conversation was so much more than a promotional piece for his latest projects. The time I spent with BB was one of the sweetest and more profound gifts I’ve received in my career.
He shared the lessons he’s learned over the decades with regard to his music, his shortcomings and his ambition. (The man will be 83 on 9/16/08.) He said he’s always known how underestimated he was by the public for being a blues singer. He said that now, after all this time, he’s finally OK with not everyone respecting the blues (because they don’t understand the blues.) He lamented on the pain of a blues singer. He expressed how happy he is that he’s lived long enough to see a black man and a white woman come to so far in the White House. And he said that when the time comes, his death should be a celebration because of how full his life was. His new song “See that My Grave is Kept Clean,” is an ode to that sentiment.
What I appreciated the most about BB was his wisdom. He said, “the world owes us nothing.” After 83 years of living, BB has come to the conclusion that life is not about what people do for us and what the universe grants us. Life is beautiful because we have the ability to give to others. In the end, this is what we are measured by.
I really wish I had brought a digital recorder so that I could write out the transcription of the interview and save it for all time.
He told me my smile is prettier than Muhammad Ali’s.
Thank you, BB. You’ll be in my heart forever.
