About this item

The first full and authoritative biography of an American - indeed a world-wide - musical and cultural legend. "No one worked harder than B.B. No one inspired more up-and-coming artists. No one did more to spread the gospel of the blues." - President Barack Obama "He is without a doubt the most important artist the blues has ever produced." - Eric Clapton Riley "Blues Boy" King (1925-2015) was born into deep poverty in Jim Crow Mississippi. Wrenched away from his sharecropper father, B.B. lost his mother at age ten, leaving him more or less alone. Music became his emancipation from exhausting toil in the fields. Inspired by a local minister's guitar and by the records of Blind Lemon Jefferson and T-Bone Walker, encouraged by his cousin, the established blues man Bukka White, B.



About the Author

Daniel de Visé

Daniel de Visé is an author and journalist. His first book, I Forgot To Remember (with Su Meck) , began as a front-page article de Visé wrote for the Washington Post, part of a 23-year career spent at the Post, the Miami Herald and three other newspapers. Andy & Don, his second book, began as a journalistic exploration into the storied career of his late brother-in-law, Don Knotts. The Comeback, his third book, rekindles a childhood obsession with bicycle racing. De Visé has won more than two dozen national, regional and local journalism awards, including a team 2001 Pulitzer Prize for deadline reporting. His investigative reporting twice led to the release of wrongly convicted men from life terms in Florida prisons. De Visé lives with his wife and children in Garrett Park, Maryland.



Read Next Recommendation

Report incorrect product information.